Oh joy.
I feel like you should get money for processing this garbage. But it was explicitly said to be garbage, what did I expect?
I wrote that before opening it. I like jinxing things. It makes a good narrative though.
If it was something good, I would have written that we are surprised what aliens throw in the dumpster, or something like that.
I am not sure what is the range of the stuff you get from expeditions, and I usually need the money for something else, like fresh, unscarred rookies for the shield wall.
I think I've gotten some cool stuff from land surveys before. Don't remember if it was worth 50k, but I was satisfied enough to do it a couple times.
Also, an easier way to cheat ironman like you were showing is to just kill the program with task manager. At least it works that way for my linux build. Haven't had any problems with that so far.
If you're quick enough with the pause menu you can also catch it during the enemy turn, though at that point I guess you might as well just edit the save to "ironman = true" on your last turn on mars. for screenshot purposes.
I'm also wondering when you pros build your third base. I borked my last playthrough pretty quickly by building a third base before august. I guess at the time (likely 4:00 am) I thought that being within an hour of Australia was our greatest security concern.
Dang. just gave the crossbow stats a second look. I didn't realize it had a +damage for firing accuracy. That almost makes it better than the hunting rifle except for range. Good to know.
Killing the program might break your save, if the game is saving at that exact moment. Copy-pasting text is safer and I don't need to restart X-Com. I also use that to have a backup in case something breaks up unrepairably. Using Ironman is just a way to make savescuming more labourous, so I don't use it as often. And also the moral view point "I have ironman so no cheating", everytime it comes to my mind.
I will build my third base for Helicopter/Dragonfly/Osprey coverage of the entire globe. Or if I have tons of money (
you wish) to need the extra research space. So probably in late 1997 - early 1998. There are very few early missions, that expire fast enough to necessitate more bases.
I never got good mileage from the crossbow, even snap shot is above 50% TU, so it has poor damage per turn and, if you miss, it is a waste of a turn. It's only saving grace is the Beach missions. I have nothing better at the moment.
Weapons that I liked in my other campaign are:
Shotgun shotgun (for low aim soldiers and monster hunts),
BlackOps CAWS (better shotgun, but very expensive),
SKS (great early non-automatic rifle),
FN-FAL (rivals the Magnum damage with better accuracy),
G-11 (only for the Brave)
and the BlackOps Auto Sniper (It adds 0.5 Reaction to accuracy more than other sniper rifles).
