My first real OpenXCom challenge. Superhuman Ironman vanilla.

[humbe]

Previously I've saved and loaded my game a lot. Didn't like losing soldiers I've used a lot of effort to train, and radar mechanics seemed to lose me the game due to RNG screwing me over. But now that I see that I can counter by using graphs I thought I'd test an Ironman challenge, and write about the game to boot, to try and motivate myself to sticking to it when the going gets rough.

It will not be a speed run. I will prioritize trying to win the game as safely as possible, making sure Earth is not overrun by aliens. Better not take any chances to reduce my chance of success. Feel free to comment the game if you want to.

It will be on Superhuman, Ironman, with options set to vanilla default, with the following changes that are purely cosmetic:

• 1280x800 windowed with 1/2 geoscape/battlescape scale. Shouldn't affect game play, but makes it easier to get an overview, easy to alt-tab to write about the game, and easy to scale screenshots as it's a perfect 4x4 scale of the orignal game.
• Show funds (in geoscape) UI option. Doesn't add secret info. Just a nice addition.
• Arrow, Time Units & Death Notifications in battlescape. Neither adds anything secret, but looks like a nice UI improvement.
• Maximize info screens.
• Inventory stats. To avoid going into soldier screen as often, to checkup stats. Sounds useful. Not secret info.

I will be using the following mods:

• XcomUtil: Statstrings - Again, not secret info, can check soldier screen at any time, but makes it easier to look for a fitting soldier for a task.

I was considering also using the Limit Craft Item Capacities mod to make the game closer to vanilla, but I see that the Skyranger equipment counts agains the bases general store regardless which it didn't use to in vanilla, so if I'm going to take that hit regardless, I'll leave the 80 item limit off to get something back. (It's default off anyhow)



Building first base in San Marino. It will cover UK, Spain, France, Germany, Italy, Egypt and parts of Russia, and once I get a Hyperwave Decoder here it will cover all of North Africa, including Nigeria, and the whole Middle East and all the way up to the north pole. That's quite a few funding nations.

Looking through my 8 starting soldiers I have:

            TU Sta Hlt Brv Rea Acc Thr Mel Str
Dolph       52  54  30  20  43  44  75  40  40
Wesley      55  51  29  10  49  53  54  34  26
Dwayne      59  63  30  50  32  42  54  38  33
Jason       58  65  34  50  47  43  67  26  30
Jean Claude 56  58  29  50  43  62  61  32  33
Bruce       50  53  35  60  56  46  76  29  23
Sylvester   58  64  31  50  33  62  67  35  22
Arnold      57  65  30  60  60  45  77  40  22

I see firing accuracy will be an issue. With soldiers starting in the 40-70 range, this low rolls will be harsh and may end in disaster. We'll see. Bravery is a bit above average at least, which might come in handy with the losses I'll be expecting. TUs also start fairly high, 5 soldiers in the 56-59 range which will recover 14 stamina per turn. Arnold and Bruce starts with really good reactions and bravery, but sadly they need a lot of training to get their accuracy up. Anyhow. At least half this bunch is likely to sacrifice themselves for the common good in the first month alone.

To compensate for the lack of half decent radar in the beginning, we'll be analyzing reports on alien activity from around the world, and using our craft to patrol to try and discover UFOs outside of our radar coverage. We will also try to catch the UFOs on the ground, to try and steal alien tech rather than destroying it. While interceptors travel a lot quicker than the skyrangers and have good range due to their speed, the skyrangers have a massive fuel tank and can stay in the air to patrol for a long time. Thus we're planning to dump an interceptor for another skyranger. With only one interceptor, we'll not be able to shoot down any bigger UFOs but we'll try to fight these on the ground instead. We would really like to avoid night missions though. If we shoot down a UFO we can wait until daytime to attack the crash site. We will arm our interceptor with 2 stingrays to shoot down small UFOs when needed. That leaves us some chance of shooting down a very small UFO without destroying it too, and bigger UFOs we're not going to attack in the air regardless.

To begin with we'll have space for 50 crew, and we really want to prioritize scientists early on. We've got 10 engineers we don't currently need, but we'll hopefully need them before January is up so feels sad to just sack them. We're also expecting to lose soldiers, and with a second Skyranger it would also be useful to have two crews, so hiring some extra soldiers sounds good. We'll finish a new living quarter facility in 16 days, in which time we can fill our research lab regardless, so I guess a few scientists more or less those days won't make that much of a difference. We decide to hire 8 more soldiers and 14 scientists for now.

Sadly, the people that run XCom before I took over, didn't think of base defense when they built the base. To help the situation a bit, we're building two new hangars in north end of the base, to replace the ones down south. We plan to replace the general store they built with living quarters later, but we need to build new general stores before we can do that.

We decided to use up most of our money after hiring more people to start base changes:


With limited money, we decided to start of building two new research labs as these takes quite some time to complete. Keeping 150 scientists on the payroll will cost quite a bit, but we hope to find money for them as we go. The two new hangars are a cost it would be nice to avoid, but if we do get attacked, it is nice to at least avoid being surrounded in our base. We would like to only have one contact point with hangars/access lifts though, but as it is, the living quarter up there will likely be staying there, and we are likely also building a living quarter left of the access lift, so if we do get attacked, there's multiple entrance points to guard. We'll plan better for additional bases when the time comes. Building two general stores (thankfully they are cheap), we should be able to replace the one we already have and build a living quarter there in 10 days time. Then we'll likely also start building a living quarter left of the access lift, giving us 4 living quarters ready at the same time that the research lab completes. We also very much need an alien containment center, but as funds are limited, it'll have to wait until we get our hands on some additional cash. It'll be first priority when we do. And once we have some extra and the old hangars can be dismantled, we'll also want a workshop or two more.

With the current plan, we're selling 1 avalanche launcher with 10 missiles, 3 cannons and 9 cannon rounds. We've also have bad experience with the Auto-Cannon, and we're selling off that one too. In total we earn back $173.883 for those. Getting rid of that avalanche launcher with missiles also does wonders for our general store capacity.

Finally, we order some more gear for our soldiers, remembering we'll be getting 8 more. 8 rifles, 20 clips, 10 HC-HE ammo for cannon, and 4 HC-I. 1 extra rocket launcher, 4 small, 8 large and 4 incendiary rockets. 27 grenades, 35 smoke grenades, 30 proximity grenades, 8 stun rods and 40 electro flares. That costs us $93.830.

Selling gear, actually got us enough cash to build the alien containment center straight away, so we're adding that to the order too.

Naturally, our few scientists, are ordered to look into how to make Laser Weapons. Hoping for some quick progress here. That's it.. All orders given. I guess we can lay back and keep scanning activity reports, and see what happens.

[humbe]

First activity reported comes already at 14:00 hours the very first day at work. A sighting is reported in South America. We immediately throw all our gear in the Skyranger, and starts flying down there. But at 14:30 hours we get two other reports, one from South Africa and one from the North Atlantic. The North Atlantic sighting I guess could be the same UFO that was over Brazil is heading towards Europe. Guessing that may be the case and that there's a second sighting in Southern Africa. At 15:00 hours, we get a new sighting in the North Atlantic, and a sighting in North Africa. Could we have two UFOs inbound Europe? Our interceptor is still rearming, not expected to be ready before 3 hours. They often are optimistic, so I'm guessing they'll be ready at 19:00. We're not flying to South America anymore though. Giving our Skyranger currently above Spain orders to patrol Europe instead. A new sighting in North Africa at 15:30.

At 16:00 we're actually spotting a very small UFO heading North East at very high altitude at 2200 km/h around the Provence area in France. We should have had our interceptor ready for this. Not expecting this small UFO to land, so shooting it down would be the best we could do. With it's current trajectory, we're guessing that this is the UFO that came over the Atlantic, and that there's another one incoming from Africa. Will try to patrol to look for that one to see if that might be a bigger one.

After seeing reports in Central Asia and Siberia, we're guessing the other UFO has gone over there, so we send our Skyranger out there to look for it, and at 19:00 we strike gold and spot a small UFO at low altitude heading south west at 480 km/h over Aktobe in Kazakhstan.



Our interceptor is now also finally ready, an hour late as expected. Now the big question is where to send it. The very small UFO is still flying around Europe, and it would be great to shoot it down, but it is much faster than our interceptor, and fairly likely to outrun us. If the small UFO land around Russia, it's in the middle of the night. We haven't gotten our flares yet, so that will be very dangerous as I hear the aliens can see just as fine in the dark as they do in the light, and our starting equipment didn't include a single flare or incendiary ammo piece. Sounds like a better option to try and shoot down the small UFO, and if we manage to, we can await attacking the crash site until daytime.

As luck will have it, the UFO lands exactly when our interceptors catches up with it. So it can't shoot it down, and I really don't want to engage the UFO at night. Our interceptor is patrolling above, but I'm not surprised if it ends up having to return due to no more fuel before the UFO is in the air again. Actually, the UFO ended up staying down until the sun is starting to rise. We tried to time it so we landed the Skyranger just as the day is starting, but I'm hoping we didn't time it wrongly. We didn't want to wait any longer than absolutely required so the UFO didn't have time to vanish.



This'll be a tough one. As luck would have it, a sectoid soldier is aiming his plasma weapon straight into our Skyranger as the hatch opens, and he'll be ready at max TUs to reaction fire many times into our craft. Wesley is ready at the entrance with a smoke grenade in hand, but priming and throwing it will cost 40 TU and it sounds very likely that there'll be reaction shots that'll kill us. Dolph has a heavy cannon ready. He can't shoot straight at all, but with a HE round he might get lucky and get close enough. Sounds like possibly the best bet. Dolph actually made the shot, and killed the Sectoid, but got a reaction shot from the right, which killed him instantly. A short career to be sure. Wesley is about to throw a smoke grenade out, but a misclick and he moves forward a tile, and a reaction shot from the side of the Skyranger kills him instantly. Jason picks one up and throws one straight forward. We don't dare move out before the smoke grenade goes off, and we don't want to be sitting ducks in here, so we detonate yet another smoke grenade in the skyranger. (Though I guess the one Wesley was wearing did likely get primed, so it will go off too.. We'll see.. Yeah.. Two smoke grenades went of in the skyranger and one below. A sectoid soldier moved up to the ramp but thankfully one of our soldiers had the skills to react and shoot him down before we got yet more shots into the Skyranger.

Morale isn't high here, 25% of our soldiers are dead and we haven't left the Skyranger yet. Let's move out. Moving out we detect the enemy UFO we see that we're on the southeast end of the map, with hills all around, except for northeast at the map border where we spot what looks like a small UFO facing us.



As we saw two reaction shots from aliens. One from area in front of UFO and one from the map corner down southeast, we were thinking there was an alien hiding in the map corner, and thought we'd better try to secure that corner so we can find a position where our backs are safe. But moving into the forest we found nothing. We know there's at least one alive alien here that shot at us last turn and we have no idea where he's at. Bollocks. Wasting more TUs to spot him with almost no TUs left to react if we do doesn't seem like a great idea, and great ideas are needed.

Yet another open question, is, did we miss the mark and create a night mission, or is there enough light for the detection distance to be 20 instead of 9? The sectoid we saw to begin with were more than 9 tiles from our front soldiers, so I'm really hoping for that, but there do seems to be some light coming from the Skyranger, so dunno if that could be the reason we saw him. We stay put at the position above. We hear a door being opened, but we don't spot anyone.



In turn 3, Jason clears the map corner and walks towards the UFO trying to hide behind a tree, as he suddenly spots two aliens. Phew. At least we can spot them at decent distance. Those two looks like prime targets for the guys in the smoke. The smoke is too thick for them to see each other. As they are close, lets have Jean Claude attempt to use this rocket launcher. Yay.. Bulls eye.. Both are down. Moving a bit further we spot a third one outside UFO, and we send 12-18 rifle shots at him but none hit.. Sadly we just end up waiting hoping the smoke will still cover us. We seem to spot some more movement while we wait but noone shot at us. Moving a bit forwards we spot a second one and the one we saw last turn. We shoot down one and throw a grenade at the other one. Not sure if the grenade will kill him, so we use him for rifle target practice too.. We don't hit him, but from the sound, it sounded like we may have hit someone behind him.

The grenade killed him, and it turned out that was the last alien. Boy were the six remaining lads happy to have survived this first alien encounter.


3 Plasma Rifles + 3 clips, 4 plasma pistols + 6 clips, 50 elerium, 1 power source, 1 navigation and 12 alloys. Quite a bit to research here. Sadly no expensive Mind Probe but still loot worth $1.599.010. Enlisting two more soldiers won't make us broke yet.

[humbe]

Since you are doing this Openxcom challenge, why don’t you give my Hybrid mod a try? Every thing is still vanilla like you are currently playing, with a twist of TFTD merge with UFO..

Was never a fan of TFTD. Not sure what your mod does, but there's a lot of Nostalgia involved here, so going to do this first OpenXCom playthrough as Vanilla as possible, and I'll see where I'll go from there.

[humbe]

After documenting all the alien artifacts for later research, we sold almost all the alien artifacts on to private firms wanting to look at them. Sold everything apart from the Elerium and the weapon clips for a nifty $1.303.500. That means we can afford another workshop or a research lab, but as we're moving hangars and don't want to build next to the new ones, we're currently out of space until we can dismantle a hangar. We could have managed with one skyranger and one interceptor for a while, but we can't even dismantle one of the hangars, as we're building new facilities neighboring the hangars that aren't next to any other completed facility.

Dolph and Wesley died.. We'll be arranging a burial soon, but for now, we'll hire two more soldiers, and buy a skyranger as an extra patrol aircraft.,

The very small UFO went out of radar coverage and disappeared by the way. As expected, never landing as far as we could see. Current graph of UFO sightings now show:
  - ~27 for Siberia.
  - ~12 for Europe.
  - ~4 for North Africa.
  - ~2 for North Atlantic, Central Asia & Southern Africa
  - ~1 for South America

Let's watch for changes. It'll be harder now that the activity isn't zero to begin with :/

But as we saw activity in Europe and in Siberia, I'm thinking that might be the two spots the aliens are focusing on this month, which suits me well as it's a neighboring territory.

[humbe]

In the middle of the day on January 2nd, we got our gear that we ordered when we arrived. Finally we have flares, proximity grenades, incendiary ammo and a decent supply of smoke grenades.

In the middle of the day on January 4th, we got 8 new soldiers incoming.

Angelina    52  62  39  40  36  63  73  25  24
Steven      55  41  38  20  49  69  53  40  26
Chuck       57  54  37  30  58  55  79  37  31
Clint       53  63  38  20  49  60  69  29  20
Jackie      59  53  30  10  59  61  58  36  22
Jet         58  42  32  50  53  41  76  33  40
Mickey      54  55  39  30  40  56  61  31  38
Keanu       50  53  30  10  49  70  58  20  40

These ones seems to have heard about our outcry of troops that can't shoot. Who will get the privilege of being first out of the Skyranger next time around? I guess we can await deciding until we need to fly out.

We also got the 14 extra scientists. Did I forget to order our original 10 to work on laser weapons after they had a look at the alien artifacts? Strange.. I might have seen wrong. In any case, 24 working on laser weapons now.

[humbe]

At midnight night to January 5th, we got 2 more crew members and the second Skyranger coming in:


Vin         51  58  34  20  47  69  80  36  22
Charles     52  52  25  30  46  43  52  40  25

Nothing more in transfer. Getting tired of checking the post office every 30 minutes checking for more activity reports though.

Finally I think I have spotted something. January 5th 10:08:40. It seems there's some new activity in central Asia. We find some rookies to throw in the front of the Skyranger, and sends it eastwards to patrol. Hopefully we can find a landed UFO before night falls. The UFO is very likely to be on the way to Europe or Siberia though. We'll monitor reports to see where it goes if radar doesn't catch it. At 10:30 hours we actually spot it on radar. A small UFO, heading northwest at high altitude travelling 2400 km/h. So looks like it is coming to Europe. Currently it's between Cyprus and Turkey. There's many hours left of the day in Europe, so hopefully we can attack a landing site before night falls. If it doesn't happen, we'll send the interceptor after it to shoot it down and attack the crash site tomorrow.



Grrr.. The UFO went east into the night so we sent interceptor after it. It flew away from the interceptor and landed in England though, but now our Skyranger is too far east to be able to catch the landing site in daytime. If only we've kept the Skyranger more west when we launched the interceptor. We can likely get there in time for a night mission. At least now we have flares. Oh wait.. Did we remember to add those to the Skyranger? It doesn't really look like it. Other option would be for interceptor to patrol and hopefully still be around to shoot it down when the UFO takes off again. Or possibly send it back to refuel and launch it again later.

We're not doing a night mission without flares here. Set the Skyranger to return, hoping interceptor can patrol long enough to shoot it down. The Skyranger used 4 hours to refuel a 76% full fuel tank, and we weren't able to get it going again with that tank even though it didn't need much fuel to get to England. After around 3 hours our interceptor was out of fuel and returned, but the UFO was still on the ground. We expected it to fly away, but somehow it was still on the ground when we got there January 5th 23:40. Ok.. So at least it's a land mission where artifacts aren't destroyed, and we do have lots of flares now, but it's still a night mission, so I'm expecting hell.



We seem to be on a 4x4 tileset, where we have one tile north of us, and one tile west of us containing the small scout. The corner tile northwest of us looks like a good area to conquer. Then we can face the UFO with nothing on our back, and throw flares around and see whatever comes at us. Sounds like a plan.

[humbe]

We deploy most of our guys outside hopefully in the cover of smoke. Leaving some in the Skyranger. Hope no alien sees enough to drop a grenade in here.



I was sure some of them would be around here waiting for us to come out. It's not like the Skyranger landed safely away from the UFO to not arouse suspicion like I asked them to. I see a building over there though, and I'm guessing it has a second floor. Think we might start next turn dropping a smoke grenade on top of the UFO to avoid reaction fire from anyone on the second floor there. Then maybe see if we can shoot down some of the wall there.

No alien spotted when we started turn 3, but the smoke is cutting our sight too. We walk the two rookies hiding behind the Skyranger wheels a bit outwards, and we end up spotting some. First an alien close to UFO corner which we hit with the heavy cannon with a HE round, removing some of the hedge. Then we see another two, one ahead of the hedge and one behind it. Mutual surprise when we spotted them, and Sylvester shot them down from inside the smoke. Have put a few flares more close to the UFO and thrown a smoke grenade on its roof. Moving up northwest next turn I think.

Eventually we finished after 11 turns. An alien was hiding behind the building and shot through it once we moved on the UFO so Sylvester sadly died. He was first wounded, but heroically didn't stay in cover and was shot a second time.

Looted 12 alloys, 2 navi, 1 power, 50 elerium, 1 mind probe, and some plasma weaponry, this time including a heavy plasma weapon with a clip.



I guess we'll need to be reasonably happy with only losing one soldier on a night mission, and Sylvesters reactions wasn't awesome. Hired a replacement soldier. Gotta try keeping the stream inbound.

Arnold was promoted to captain and is now our highest ranking officer. He's firing accuracy is still low at 47 but he looks like he can become an awesome soldier if we manage to keep him alive. Angelina, Jean Claude and Bruce have made Sergeant rank.

Graphs now showing ~53 activity in Europe and still ~27 in siberia. Central asia up to ~5, north africa ~3 and I guess mostly equal to above for ~1-2.

[humbe]

At midnight, at the start of January 6th we finally researched Laser Weapons. That took some time. Assigning our 24 scientists to research laser pistols. Looking forward to start producing laser weapons. But still 11 days until we can hire more scientists

8th of January a new recruit arrives. He calls himself prince and looks to have lots to learn with the following stats:

            TU Sta Hlt Brv Rea Acc Thr Mel Str
Prince      52  56  35  10  39  52  75  33  34

At 19:24 January 9th we're seeing reports on some more activity in North Africa. We'll send up our empty Skyranger as a patrol towards Africa to begin with.. At 22:00 we're seeing the vessel on radar. Exposed by my interceptor that I sent out when I saw activity reported in Europe too. It's a small UFO travelling west into the baltic sea from the baltic states, at low altitude doing 1080 km/h. As it's fairly early in the night, we'll see if we can shoot it down over land and recover what's left at daytime.

As luck will have it, it outruns our interceptor, and then goes down to land in Denmark. Our interceptor likely won't have fuel to patrol until it's in the air again, and if we send it back immediately we may very well still be refueling when the UFO launches. It may try to land a second time so we have more options, but it might very well not too. This sounds like another night mission. Maybe the second Skyranger wasn't such a great idea. A second interceptor would have helped us being able to shoot UFOs down easier to avoid some night missions.

But I guess there's too much loot awaiting us, and we should save the people in Denmark, so it smells of another night mission.



We don't see anyone outside, but we're limited by no light. There may very well be multiple aliens looking into our Skyranger for all we now. There's a two story building just in front where they may be hiding and ready. Maybe we need to dump a smoke grenade at the Skyranger exit too, to try and limit sight at level 2.

Short career for prince it turns out. He throws out a smoke grenade and got shot down.  *sigh*.. They're reaction shooting for each TU I spend, and kill of 2 far back in the Skyranger too. Eventually we destroy the building and get out. We lose a fourth soldier fighting close to UFO, but finally the aliens succumb to our numbers. This was a larger cross shaped UFO btw.



Prince, Bruce, Chuck and Jet died for the good cause. We hire 4 more soldiers, and as midnight come and January 10th is starting our researchers at least have some good news. Laser Pistols are ready for production, and we can start researching a rifle variant.

Activity graphs are now at around 62 in Europe, 26 in Siberia & 6 in North Africa.

We haven't sold the loot for the last couple of runs so our general store is overfilled. But on a days time we will have built two new ones.

[humbe]

Already new activity in early Sunday morning. Reports in both Europe and Siberia, though Siberia report latest, so I guess it flew over there. Sending out our craft to patrol. At 05:30 we spot a small UFO at low altitude going west at 540 km/h around Kislokan in Russia. It's spotted by our interceptor that moved out there much faster than the Skyranger, but at that speed and altitude it may be landing very soon, and our Skyranger with our platoon is on the way. Hopefully we'll manage a daytime mission this time around.



Still dangerous in daytime, but having good view at least makes morale higher. Finally a mission in broad daylight. A bit surprised this is 4th mission on small UFO and it's only the 10th of January. 11 soldiers were alive and well for the mission. Should hopefully be enough. Managed to dump a smoke grenade outside and wait a turn without seeing any activity or reaction fire this time around at least.

The little forest just in front of the hatch is the north east corner of the map, so a good place to gather to get our back against the wall. Then maybe conquer the height and get our heavy weapons up there. Might want to get incendiary weapons ready here too..

[humbe]

Keanu was promoted to Sergeant. He is looking to be a good sniper. Yet 4 more soldiers killed. Vin, Angelina, Dwayne and Jackie :/ One died hiding behind a tree within 20 tiles from the UFO entrance in hopes of spotting them, but the alien just walked out and shot him straight down from behind what I hoped provided some cover. Two died around the UFO entrance. Tried to move some up there to throw a proximity grenade and carry away some artifacts. Did not enter the UFO.

Alien graphs are now at ~64 for Europe, ~41 for Sibera and ~6 for North Africa. Base store is even fuller, but less than a day until our 2 new general stores complete.

[humbe]

Currently, we have 6 soldiers ready for action and 2 wounded. 8 more hired but 44 and 54 hours before we get 2 more batches of 4 each. 11 soldiers have been lost in action, some of them really good recruits. Lets take a break and analyze a bit what has gone wrong in these 4 missions.

• Many have died due to unlucky start, where the Skyranger landed so the aliens could see soldiers inside the Skyranger, and thus reaction shoot due to us arming smoke grenade and throwing it. It is hard to do anything about it. Especially when they're in a position where we aren't able to see them so we don't even have the optio of whether to try and shoot them down first. We could have taken more care to put the most expendable soldiers first always though, to try and avoid losing important soldiers at least. We have done it a bit, but as there's new troops coming in every mission, we have taken it a bit lighly. Hopefully we can get some armor and make it a bit less lethal later.
• Another killer is aliens spotting us while moving in their own turn. Even though we may have many players with line of sight to them, they often gets to drop the first shot, and they generally seem to have pretty good accuracy. Several have died on first shot from an alien in their turn, before any reaction fire have been attempted. If we had manage to hide our players better at the end of our turn, avoiding aliens spotting us, we could try to spot the aliens again in our turn trying for mutual surprise and no reaction shots, and then shoot them down from a distance and go hide again. It's a tedious tactic though, and we're getting a bit impatient.
• Thirdly, there's been some misclicks and missing information and ironman is unforgiving. Not knowing how many TUs we'll be using to pick up something, and then ending up with too few TUs left to hide, or thinking that we'll have X TUs left after moving given path, but then it turns out we had less. For instance, we thought we could mostly move anywhere for 4 TUs sideways and 6 diagonally, even if we started of facing in other direction on our knees, but seems we use extra TUs to get up or change facing. Is the pathfinding with the display of TUs left always correct? I can't go back in time to check on ironman, but I feel I've lost TUs I thought I had some times
• In general, we've been a bit impatient and the pulse has been running high. If we're a bit more calculating and slow moving, I hope we can improve on the statistics. Laser weapons and some armor in the future will also help I hope.

[humbe]

13th of January 09:00 the second batch of new recruits have arrived. We're back at 16 soldiers though Arnold and Clint are still wounded. Arnold should be back in a few days, but Clint is seriously hurt and the estimate is that he needs 34 days before he's back in service. Almost reason enough to retire him, but we'll let him be on the payroll for now..

The new soldiers are Daniel, Linda, Sigourney, Viggo, Ryan, Jeremy, Gal and Michelle. Tried to make a more detailed overview of current soldiers:

                   Starting stats                          Current stats
            TU Sta Hlt Brv Rea Acc Thr Mel Str   TU Sta Hlt Brv Rea Acc Thr Mel Str  Score
Daniel      52  51  30  30  35  54  61  40  29                                         2.5
Charles     52  52  25  30  46  43  52  40  25                                         3.5
Linda       55  45  26  30  50  43  76  40  21                                         4.5
Clint       53  63  38  20  49  60  69  29  20   57  68  44  20  49  61  70  29  29    4.5
Sigourney   54  45  35  10  32  69  72  28  20                                         4.5
Mickey      54  55  39  30  40  56  61  31  38   59  67  45  30  40  57  63  31  45      5
Viggo       50  60  27  40  56  54  68  25  23                                         5.5
Jason       58  65  34  50  47  43  67  26  30   63  68  38  50  47  44  71  26  34      6
Keanu       50  53  30  10  49  70  58  20  40   54  61  38  10  49  75  58  20  45      6
Ryan        57  65  25  10  38  70  80  31  34                                           6
Jeremy      56  56  38  60  52  53  78  27  24                                         6.5
Steven      55  41  38  20  49  69  53  40  26   59  47  43  20  49  73  54  40  31    6.5
Gal         53  44  39  50  57  61  77  27  37                                           7
Jean Claude 56  58  29  50  43  62  61  32  33   59  64  31  50  44  64  61  32  34      7
Arnold      57  65  30  60  60  45  77  40  22   64  69  35  60  61  46  78  40  30    7.5
Michelle    60  42  39  10  55  67  55  31  35                                           8


I've tried to create some sort of score based on their stats, to make it a bit easier to see who's more valued than others. Especially putting value to having good reaction and firing accuracy, and ignoring some of the stats that are easily trained and/or not that important. Not putting the formula here, as it'll likely be changed and it's far from good. Just using it as a value to sort my soldiers in the Skyranger.

I'm not going to update the current stats bit after every mission either.. Just once in a while.

If we were to sell all the alien artifacts we have found, we'd have a bit more than 7 million dollars available. In 4 days time, we'll be hiring 26 scientists for 1.56 million. In 14 days time, we'll want another 50 scientists for 3 mill. If we can afford it, we may want 50 more in 20 days time for another 3 mill, depending on getting even more cash in the system prior to that of course.

In 6 days time we'll complete the alien containment center, at which time we hope to find a navigator to research and get hyperwave decoders fast. When we do, hopefully fairly early in February, we'd like to build the decoders, which are fairly expensive. Likely we'll want to build at least 2 more bases, and expand to 6 bases total as soon as we have money for it, to get decent coverage of all funding nations and most land.

[tarkalak]

Currently, we have 6 soldiers ready for action and 2 wounded. 8 more hired but 44 and 54 hours before we get 2 more batches of 4 each. 11 soldiers have been lost in action, some of them really good recruits. Lets take a break and analyze a bit what has gone wrong in these 4 missions.

• Many have died due to unlucky start, where the Skyranger landed so the aliens could see soldiers inside the Skyranger, and thus reaction shoot due to us arming smoke grenade and throwing it. It is hard to do anything about it. Especially when they're in a position where we aren't able to see them so we don't even have the optio of whether to try and shoot them down first. We could have taken more care to put the most expendable soldiers first always though, to try and avoid losing important soldiers at least. We have done it a bit, but as there's new troops coming in every mission, we have taken it a bit lighly. Hopefully we can get some armor and make it a bit less lethal later.

You can have the first soldiers arm the smoke and drop it in the inventory screen and end turn. No reaction fire. You can also prearm grenades with right click while equipping the soldiers.

• Another killer is aliens spotting us while moving in their own turn. Even though we may have many players with line of sight to them, they often gets to drop the first shot, and they generally seem to have pretty good accuracy. Several have died on first shot from an alien in their turn, before any reaction fire have been attempted. If we had manage to hide our players better at the end of our turn, avoiding aliens spotting us, we could try to spot the aliens again in our turn trying for mutual surprise and no reaction shots, and then shoot them down from a distance and go hide again. It's a tedious tactic though, and we're getting a bit impatient.
• Thirdly, there's been some misclicks and missing information and ironman is unforgiving. Not knowing how many TUs we'll be using to pick up something, and then ending up with too few TUs left to hide, or thinking that we'll have X TUs left after moving given path, but then it turns out we had less. For instance, we thought we could mostly move anywhere for 4 TUs sideways and 6 diagonally, even if we started of facing in other direction on our knees, but seems we use extra TUs to get up or change facing. Is the pathfinding with the display of TUs left always correct? I can't go back in time to check on ironman, but I feel I've lost TUs I thought I had some times

Kneeling take 4 TU and standing up takes 8.
If you tell a soldier to walk on a spot behind him he will not waste TUs for turning, but if he spots an enemy while turning he will waste turn TUs and will not move. Do you see numbers as in the 1st picture below?
The move stats that you see do not take account of the above.

The solution: Hold shift to force move soldiers. They will not stop if they spot aliens and will not waste TUs turning on the move.

I can see the TUs needed to put things in every slot of the inventory when I pick something with the mouse, and I think this is OXC or OXCE feature, not a mod.

• In general, we've been a bit impatient and the pulse has been running high. If we're a bit more calculating and slow moving, I hope we can improve on the statistics. Laser weapons and some armor in the future will also help I hope.

Yep, nothing teaches caution like ironman. Your save might get corrupted though, you should occasionally make a copy or use willpower instead of the ironman option. I can't so I roll with backups. You can use a text editor to copy paste the save in another file, I find it easier than copying the file.

[humbe]

As January 17th starts, we finish a living quarter facility and hires another 26 scientists to fill the first research lab. We also hire another 20 engineers so we will be able to produce laser rifles a bit faster then the time comes. 5 laser pistols built so far. We see that we have screwed up facility placement somehow, making it still 10 days before we can demolish the general store in the location we want to build the 4th living quarter module. If we had switched around a general store and the research lab, we could have demolished and started another living quarter right away. Not expecting first ironman game to be anywhere close to optimal though, so shouldn't matter too much.

Two more days pass without any alien activity. Alien containment center is now complete, and we have 8 stun rods ready, hoping to capture a navigator on the next UFO. Hoping to see one very soon. It's been quiet for a while now.

Tiresome to let the clock run when I want to know when new reports come in at the graph as fast as possible. Currently checking each hour. Would be nice if it was possible to get a notification when the graph had been quiet for a while, and it suddenly got activity again.

Thanks for the suggestions Tarkalak. Hadn't thought of waiting a second turn before starting by deploying a smoke grenade inside Skyranger. Sounds like something to do when we suspect issues at least. Force move also sounds like an interesting option to be aware of. I'll take a closer look next battle. I'm trying to keep the game totally vanilla, so haven't been looking for extra functionality, but some of it might have been in the original without me knowing about it.. But I've kept all the settings on default on purpose..

[humbe]

It looks like there may be activity in Europe in the night 19th of January. Flying some ships out to patrol.. Yupp.. Small UFO travelling 1404 km/h at low altitude, travelling northwest currently just above Austria. It's not all that long until daylight comes, so hopefully we'll be able to get a daylight mission possibly without shooting it down. We scrambled our interceptor at around 01:30.. Will try to track when it is out of fuel.

We flew up the Skyranger close to the landing site, and awaited sunlight, and the UFO was landed until sunlight came, and interceptor was still hovering it.



We seem to be positioned on the eastern edge of the map, where there's 5 tiles south to west, and we are seeing the 3 in the middle. We did prime a smoke grenade before landing, so should be play safe and dump it where we stand or use an extra round to be safe. I guess we can test out the latter, though it looks less likely that we'll get reaction shots inside UFO on turn 1 this time around.

I don't see any info on TU cost when I pick up to move stuff in inventory though. I guess it might be an OXCE thing, or an option that isn't default enabled because vanilla didn't have it. Though I can't remember seeing any in OX as I think I'd have added it if I found it.