epic victories

[crwydryny]

I've been playing x-com for well over 10 years now and I found this project about a year ago but only today decided to join up.

in my many many battles as an X-com commander I've had many harrowing experiences where my entire team gets slaughtered but also many epic victories where I've somehow managed to snatch victory from the very jaws of death so I'd like to make a thread dedicated to all our epic victory stories


here's a few of mine to get the ball rolling.

during my first playthrough of x-com I had no idea what I was getting into, my research was all over the shop, and when I did research I usually failed to build the items or equip them to the skyranger, during this time I encountered my first sectoid terror mission... at night. I had just finished researching plasma pistols but hadn't equiped any to my squad so my squad of 14 troopers lands in the city near a petrol station armed with only rifles, and grenades... and things went about as well as you can imagine, disembarking I split my team up, one group went north to the main road, one went into the petrol station and the other cut east through the station to swing up the road on the far side. then the fecal matter hit the fan. I was ambushed on all sides by sectoids and cyberdisks. my team on the main road was pinned down by 2 sectoids and 3 cyberdisks everyone. while the team in the station got hit by a grenade, the pumps went up, they were blinded by smoke, and several were dead or wounded, while the far team got cut off a cyberdisk and sectoid on the junction had them pinned, and 2 more sectoids had moved through the station between the shop and the garage. my team was fighting a loosing battle and most were cut off from the skyranger, worse yet they quickly ran out of grenades and ammo was running low. those still standing were forced to scavange ammo from their dead team mates as their bullets just bounced off the cyberdisks with little to no effect. then one of my guys at the main road spotted a sectoid trying to outflank them across the road. with his last bullet he managed to drop him, then with nothing to lose he made a dash for it. plasma bolts from the cyberdisks and sectoids on the road zipped past his head as he dashed into the alley, the wall behind him exploding as plasma bolts struck it, to his luck the sectoid had a plasma pistol. this one action turned the whole battle in favour of my team, we were already down to about 8 men out of 14, and those still standing were low on ammo or bleeding. then my brave trooper with the plasma pistol took aim at one of the cyberdisks that had my team pinned. BOOM! the cyberdisk goes down BOOM! the one next to it gets caught in the explosion BOOM! the third one goes down taking with it the sectoids on the main road. half the aliens forces gone with a single burst from the plasma pistol.
my team on the main road regroups and swings around behind the sectoids that have my far team pinned taking down the cyberdisk again with a well aimed bust of plasma fire while the rifles mop up what's left of the sectoids.

needless to say this one battle chaned the entire layout of my team, going from rifle team to a combined arms team with a mix of heavy weapons, rifles and a rocket tank.



epic victory #2
seeing a battleship land I decided to seize the chance and take it down so I scramble my skyranger to intercept, only when I get to the mission I realise I forgot to rearm the craft or even crew it for that matter, due to a previous mission most of my team were being patched up and I forgot to load up the replacements.... so I found myself taking down a battleship with 3 guys armed with only pistols and stunrods as none of the other weapons had any ammo. now I had two choices, go in anyway or bug out and call it even... I took the former how bad could it be right??? well I get to the battleship with no problem, then it happens a muton walks out.... pistols have no effect on this hulking beast... but 3 guys dogpiling him with stunrods do, we managed to take him down... arming my team with a plasma rifle and a grenade. so sitting near the entrance I set about snipping any aliens that decided to come out, quickly arming my guys with plasma rifles and grenades from the fallen enemy. this is when the greatest bout of luck imaginable happens... one of the mutons with a blaster launcher panics and fires it right down the middle of the main deck where he happens to strike one of his buddies wiping out everything on the main deck and giving my men a clear route to the command deck to kill the last muton.


now for my most recient epic victory which left me speachless.
during my last playthrough I get all the way to cydonia with only loosing about 3 guys the surface battle on cydonia was over pretty quick thanks to liberal use of psionics to control the enemy forces resulting in only one hovertank getting destroyed. the battle for the base however turned bad really quick for the aliens.... I drop my hovertank down to scout the area. spot an alien, take control with psionics, he spots another, long story short I chain up 3 aliens, including a etheral commander with a blaster launcher and a sectopod. the sectopod happens to be right by the door to the brain... I send him in and launch the blaster bomb in.... BOOM! this blows a hole in the ceiling allowing another of my units to spot an alien upstairs. so I use a psionic trooper to take command of this alien and find him looking the brain in the eye... and he just so happens to have a grenade handy... first round brain is killed. victory to x-com

[yrizoud]

Nice !
#3 is the kind of things which is "the stuff of legend" the first time it works for you - but then you realize every Cydonia mission can be completed this way, it's a strong argument for nerfing end-game psionics.

[7Saturn]

If you've trained your soldiers well with psionics (which many if not most players will do), then most late-game aspects loose their demanding nature. That's why there are people who say, psionics breaks the game. Many of my cydonia-missions look pretty much like that. Maybe not on the first turn, but second, at least on the third turn you will have victory, because once you are on the second stage, you can take your 100 TU running hover tanks, sweep the area or take your alien puppets doing the job for you. And if the random generator was kind enough to you, you start next to the brain-map-part, so the mission is over before you know it.

[Cristao]

MORE!! MORE!! We want MORE!!


Nice thread.

[Hythlodaeus]

now for my most recient epic victory which left me speachless.
during my last playthrough I get all the way to cydonia with only loosing about 3 guys the surface battle on cydonia was over pretty quick thanks to liberal use of psionics to control the enemy forces resulting in only one hovertank getting destroyed. the battle for the base however turned bad really quick for the aliens.... I drop my hovertank down to scout the area. spot an alien, take control with psionics, he spots another, long story short I chain up 3 aliens, including a etheral commander with a blaster launcher and a sectopod. the sectopod happens to be right by the door to the brain... I send him in and launch the blaster bomb in.... BOOM! this blows a hole in the ceiling allowing another of my units to spot an alien upstairs. so I use a psionic trooper to take command of this alien and find him looking the brain in the eye... and he just so happens to have a grenade handy... first round brain is killed. victory to x-com

This one is far from impressive or amazing, and the chief reason why I either don't use Psionics or use them with LOS-only for my soldiers. Not to mention I do not mind control Sectopods and Cyberdiscs myself, since I think it's kind of absurd to mind control robots.

[crwydryny]

This one is far from impressive or amazing, and the chief reason why I either don't use Psionics or use them with LOS-only for my soldiers. Not to mention I do not mind control Sectopods and Cyberdiscs myself, since I think it's kind of absurd to mind control robots.

true it's not very impressive but there's just something about curbstomping an enemy that has had you on the ropes for months,
 
but the game lore itself states that they are controled psionically by the aliens indicating organic CPUs.

If you've trained your soldiers well with psionics (which many if not most players will do), then most late-game aspects loose their demanding nature. That's why there are people who say, psionics breaks the game

true, once you've got a decient number of psionic soldiers trained up you can mop the floor with the aliens and turns life or death battles into tedious work of mindcontrol, drop weapons, find another alien rinse and repeat then round them all up for the firing squad

[7Saturn]

For further training... reactions and accuracy may need some polishing. =)

But back to the topic:

I also had shaking experience with a base attack of Snakemen. Usually I play with the old lame save and reload-trick. But I was determinded, to play the early game without that. And then this! As you know, those f***ers always take their friends, the Chryssalids with them, to have a little fun. I had one rocket tank and ten rather rookie-like men on that base – equipped with sniper rifles and pistols. Not the very best equipment to begin with, when you think about the Chryssies. They are just to fast and to well armored. And that's pretty much what kicked my ass, despite the fact, that this base was layouted with one choke point, where I could concentrate the fire on. The snake men could be killed rather well, by a few far distant snipers hiding around corners. However, those rookies sucked at that, anyways, so a few got rather near and took some of my men with them. So hide and fire was the order. And if they came near, I could switch to the pistols. They have this nice aspect about them, needing far less TUs. So you could prevent the Snakes from reacting to quickly. 2-3 hits can do it, while they don't have the time to react. If you can combine that with snipers and other pistol soldiers, that's still dangerous, but doable.

But there was still that problem of Chryssalids. 4 of my men were already down, as well as that tank, when they hit me. Most Snakes were either gone or to far away in the hangar to contribute to the plasma rain. But the black ones were quite a big problem, because they were replenishing their stock of units, rather unimpressed by my snipers and pistols... But I got lucky. One of my men hid in a compartment and wasn't infected. They overlooked him. *deepbreaththatmoment* He could sneak out and grab one of the plasma rifles laying around. And that turned the tide. Finally something, that could deal a decent amount of damage, to prevent that outbreak of zombies. I lost another two men by the Chryssies, but could get my men to take the other plasma weapons laying around. In the end I finished with 4 men left, 2 of them wounded (I still sacked them, because in almost 2 months of cost and nobody needs their rather expensive rookie services any more). But we survived! =) That one lucky bastard saved the day (and the base).

[7Saturn]

There we have another Cydonia-one: 10 Men in specter suits, 4 plasma tanks. Lost: 1 Tank, the unlucky one, that had to go out as first one... In the base it self I sent two of the tanks out to scout. Second alien I spotted, was a Chryssalid. Let's put those TUs to good use by scouting half of the map... Spotting a Celatid, who's spotting a Sectopod after using almost all TUs. The Sectopod was going into level one of the brain compartment, spotting a Ethereal in the second leven. That Ethereal got me the last Ethereal in front for the Brain. I fired one Plasma Blaster shot at the brain. That's about it. The brain compartment was on the far side of the map... As I said, once you got really good at psi, the game is pretty much over. You don't even need to train your guys any more in accuracy'n'stuff, as you can simply let them obliterate each other.

[hellrazor]

There we have another Cydonia-one: 10 Men in specter suits, 4 plasma tanks. Lost: 1 Tank, the unlucky one, that had to go out as first one... In the base it self I sent two of the tanks out to scout. Second alien I spotted, was a Chryssalid. Let's put those TUs to good use by scouting half of the map... Spotting a Celatid, who's spotting a Sectopod after using almost all TUs. The Sectopod was going into level one of the brain compartment, spotting a Ethereal in the second leven. That Ethereal got me the last Ethereal in front for the Brain. I fired one Plasma Blaster shot at the brain. That's about it. The brain compartment was on the far side of the map... As I said, once you got really good at psi, the game is pretty much over. You don't even need to train your guys any more in accuracy'n'stuff, as you can simply let them obliterate each other.

I tried to fix this in my Mod, making Late game enemies very hard to psionically control. Ethereals are actually totally immune.
I hope that some of my testplayers will also provide a epis story soon.
Meanwhile i am going to storm a alien base in my new testrun. Only Alloy Vest, Alloy Ammo, Alien Grenades on my Sides.

[Zyzyfer]

This is a terror mission i recently did with my Professionals (my best of the best team of 14-man crew- well actually 12men, i just sacked my ammo mule and one of my dedicated scouts still had a week to go is sick bay). 
Lots of smoke grenades for cover. Explosive grenades (by dedicated grenadier), and heavy launcher to clear buildings.
Occasional alien grenade to flush out fortified aliens. Lastly,  lots of reaction fire from elite scout team with additional support from sniper team.

12v43 without saving/reloading tactic. So much FUN!!!


edit:
I have to agree with those that say psionics break the game. I play with the mod that disables all psionics- game becomes unchallenging/boring with same IMO.

[Orz]

Mission: Raid alien base, capture Commander (first one in this playhthrough!), get out. Success

[NotCIAAgent]

Base defense. Arthropods and Spitters. Only had two dogs.

Long story short, now I will put 4 dogs in every base. The money I got from the corpses and weapons will sure cover the costs.

[Countdown]

Just beat the game for the first time yesterday (you can read my list of post-campaign quandaries here: https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php/topic,4352.0.html). My experience was the same as others above. MC made it pathetically easy to get to the brain room and destroy it. I lost one soldier on the surface and none in the base. The whole thing was just anti-climatic and unsatisfying.

So then to mix it up, I reloaded a fresh Cydonia map, but this time I didn't use any psi-amps and I brought along some of my oldest soldiers who had low bravery/psi strength, so didn't make the cut for my first Cydonia mission. The result was much more of a challenge and way more fun.

Naturally, I started by sending my mentally weak cowards out to scout and of course, one of them (10 psi strength) was taken over on the first alien turn. I knew going in that Captain Timothy McCahery (named for my cousin) was going to be a liability, so I equipped him with a laser rifle and smoke grenades. Laser rifles are relatively ineffective against flying suits, but still can deal with aliens just fine. However, even flying suits have their laser limits and apparently taking six shots to the face from your teammate at point blank range is over the line. Hence, RIP Sergeant Link (of Zelda).

So after that friendly fire, the added challenge was to not only kill the aliens and make my way to the green lift, but to sneak around Timothy and avoid getting too much of his reaction fire. My squad stepped up big time, had some epic long range kills with their last snap shot and slowly, but surely we fought back. I lost three more soldiers (RIP Sergeant Mario [of Nintendo], Sergeant Donatello [the Ninja Turtle, not the artist], and Sergeant Neelix [of Star Trek Voyager]), but eventually we had everyone in the landing area ... except Timothy. I got control of him for one turn, disarmed him and moved him close to the lift, but then he kept panicking and there was still at least one alien out there doing mind attacks (how many aliens they had left, I don't know).

I know most commanders would have just left Timothy behind, but I couldn't do that. He was from one of my earliest batches of soldiers and the original "defacto leader" back when it was just one base and 14 troops (he was the first Captain, but was never promoted afterwards for obvious reasons). Plus, he's my cousin and Christmas would be awkward if I just left him to die on Mars.

So thankfully I had equipped one of my other mental weaklings with a small launcher just in case he went mental and after two direct hits, Timothy was unconscious. It took four soldiers to drag his sorry ass and all his equipment into the landing area, but we got him in there in one turn. I also had to revive him before we entered the base because for some silly reason (a definite oversight on the game's programming IMO) the Cydonia lift doesn't recognize unconscious soldiers when you hit the "abort mission" button. I think if it's on the lift it should go down into the base with you, but whatever, we got the job done and saved Timothy's life.

The decision to rescue Timothy ended up being a clutch call on my part because once in the base he was the main focus for the Ethereal mind attacks. Sure, they took control of him almost immediately, but this time I only gave him a small launcher so worst case he might knock someone out. Using him as a "psi-rod" probably prevented some of my other troops (two of them were in the 20s for psi strength) from succumbing to MC. There was one really scary moment though when Timothy shot a stun bomb out of the darkness and I thought it was a blaster bomb from an alien. Big time relief when it just hit the wall harmlessly.

Once inside the base my guys were pretty efficient in clearing it out. There were a couple nail biters when a Chrysalid charged out of the darkness at my troops, but some solid reaction fire from Captain Robert Johnson (my boss) and Sergeant Chewy (of Star Wars) saved anyone from becoming a Zombie.

We were down to just the final hallway and one Ethereal and hadn't lost any men in the base. But someone had to be the guy to go down the hallway first and that's how Captain Daryl Dixon (of The Walking Dead) was "naded" to death by the Ethereal who jumped ... err, floated down.

After that, it just took some shots from the door by Colonel Princess Peach (Nintendo) and Colonel Coach Underwood (my former coach) to avenge Daryl by killing the final Ethereal (who was also the final alien alive) and finish the game off without even having to go into the brain room.

So that's the story. Some of the final challenge was self-imposed, but overall it made for a much more "epic victory".

[yrizoud]

Plus, he's my cousin and Christmas would be awkward if I just left him to die on Mars.

Thanks a lot for a good laugh!