My first real OpenXCom challenge. Superhuman Ironman vanilla.

[humbe]

March activity scanning started off in a fray.. During the night we managed to see a subtle graph change, and by eliminating noise by looking at region by region, we saw that there was small activity reported in arctic, north america and south-eastern asia. That doesn't really sound like one UFO. Do we have two at the same time? We send interceptor to the US and the second empty skyranger to the south-eastern Asia and let the skyranger with our assault team stay put until we know if we should head east or west.

Once the interceptor is in US and the second skyranger on the way to Asia, we notice that the activity is increasing in asia but not in the US. Not long after we see a small UFO landed in Asia, and we send our assault team. We're expecting it to come late, but we manage to get there in time, though it's going to be a night mission.

At least we have 7 soldiers with personal armor now. Hoping that helps a bit.

The interceptor is out of fuel and returned long time ago. We didn't see anything in North America. Guessing it was a very small scout that succeeded its scouting mission and returned. So I guess March activity is going to be North America and South East Asia.. That's going to be rough as both regions are pretty far away from our main base, and far away from each other.



Deployed and finding enemies.. Ich.. Not another floater month.. I want a sectoid leader.. Finding everyone outside of UFO. Sadly, Jennifer dies when scouting and finding alien that spots her first. I guess we might have moved a bit too far compared to how far we had thrown a flare.. The personal armor didn't help one bit sadly.

Other than that the mission ends up fine. Jennifer had very poor reaction and rifle skills, so a replacement will be good regardless.



Ok.. So floaters are attacking South East Asia in March.. But we have also spotted minimal activity in Arctic, North America, Siberia and Australasia.. Hoping Australasia won't be another region this month. That's far away from Europe. Siberia action is likely just same UFO that went into Asia. I guess it could have come south through Australasia too, and the second UFO came from arctics into US. Sounds most likely given that the activty came from 2 UFOs. SE Asia activity now at ~32 while rest with activity was 1-2.

Selling the loot, we can now afford another 25 scientists. Then we're up to 150 once they arrive, maxing out our research lab capacity. 150 should research fairly fast, so think we'll avoid building yet another. We have engineer capacity for 50 more engineers though. So I guess we'll hire more of those when we get even more cash again.

[humbe]

During the 4th of March, we got the remaining scientists and when 5th of March came we finished researching UFO Power Source.. Starting on Power Suit..

At 06:32 we notice another activity report in South East Asia.. Scrambling to patrol and hopefully intercept.. 3 more armors made, so now we have 9 soldiers with personal armor.. Which will be the first 9 out of the door.. At 10:30 we see it.. A small UFO at very low altitude heading north west at 1188 km/h. We need to be lucky for this to become a day mission.. Night is coming fast.. Yay.. It kept going north west and landed while skyranger approaches from the north west, so we look to have just made it before night came. Bringing flares equipped just to be on the safe side though.



It was a day mission with farmland/buildings against floaters in a large scout. Sigourney and Scarlett was sadly killed. Personal Armor not doing squat this time around either. Sigourney was no rookie anymore with 10 kills, but both of them had poor training. Sigourney had low bravery and reactions, though were a good shot. Scarlett was brave with decent reactions but couldn't shoot straight at all.

Selling all the loot, including some of the alloys we've been saving, we just manage to afford 50 new engineers. Hired.. We should soon have researched power armor so we can make some better armor faster..

[humbe]

Around 20:00 6th of March we see some more activity reported in Australasia.. Removing graphs to remove noise we see that Central Asia, Southern Africa, South Atlantic and Indian Ocean also have had a very small bit of activity. But that don't need to be new as it's normally covered by the messy graph..

Sounds likely that the UFO is just travelling over Australasia on its way to South East Asia, but we're not sure. Sending the interceptor and empty skyranger heading a bit north of Australia while we will inspect graphs.

Half an hour later, another sighting in Australasia, but half an hour after that, we have activity on South Eastern Asia. At this time we send our assault team eastwards too. Curiously we see no more activity reported in a while. We had removed some regions from the graph to remove noise, but adding it back we see that I've been tricked, and the UFO is now in Northern Africa. We send the assault team over there while the other crafts are returning, but we find nothing. Activity in North Africa stabilize around 9. I guess that means a very small UFO.

While chasing it we invented Power Suits and started looking at UFO navigation.

8th of March we finally finish the San Marino Hyperwave-Decoder with big celebrations. We will still need to look at reports as we finish building the rest, but now we should detect a lot of activity better. 7 more days until Great Falls and Weinan decoders are done, at which point we will have pretty decent coverage. At least of northern. Covering the entire northern hemisphere and some bits south of the equator in Africa and Asia.

Here is the coverage of the first decoder:


A pretty fair chance to see quite a few UFOs going elsewhere than Europe too..

By the way.. Scanning reports have been easier once I tested out keyboard shortcuts.. G to open graph, and 1 to get to 5 second time.. Meaning I can avoid using mouse to enter the screens, so I can allow time to go faster, as I easier enter graph screen, and easier turn back clock to 5 sec after exiting it..

10th of March 10:30, still no more alien activity. 5 more days until next two decoders, and 15 for the last 3. Not so long until I can stop scanning reports.

[humbe]

First decoder detection. I guess it's floaters all around this month too ;/.. And North Africa and South East China is likely the active areas.

This UFO will likely evade us, but we'll send the interceptor to attempt to shoot it down.. After 3 failed attempts of shooting it down, it landed, and while we assumed it would fly away while we was moving skyranger down there we actually had a short night mission against it. First mission with no casualties I think



Went out of money to produce power suits just before reaching it, but after selling the heavy plasma gun and the mind probe we found there, we can produce some more..

If North Africa is a hot region that fits us great though, as we now have it within decoder coverage.

[humbe]

11th of March and we invent UFO Navigation. We can now research Flying Suit and UFO Construction. Lets just get Flying Suit out of the way first.. Now that we have 80 engineers we produce Power Suits pretty quickly, so would be nice to get to Flying Suit before we have that many ..

At noon 12th of March, we are out of alloys to make more suits, as we sold quite a few to afford the extra engineers. Setting the engineers to make some laser rifles for cash until we get some more alloys.

13th of March we invent flying suits.. Could go on to UFOs, but currently interceptor weaponry is more of a limitation to shoot down UFOs than the craft itself. Researching Heavy Plasma + Clip first to get to plasma beams.

14th of March we finish hangars in Great Falls and Weinan. One day left for decoders.

At 01:00 we get another activity report:



Small UFO. Harvest mission.. Probably going to be morning before it lands. Sadly still floaters of course, but sounds like a ground assault. It's in North Africa where we're sure to see it, so no need to send anyone but the assault team. Now, we have front 5 soldiers in power suits, and the rest in personal armor. Maybe soon we'll see a spotter surviving a hit. Oh.. And I guess we should enroll the 3 recruits that have come to fill in vacancies.


George      57  45  32  20  33  55  80  27  26                                         4.5
Colin       57  64  38  50  50  42  62  28  21                                         6.5
Daisy       51  66  38  60  54  68  68  27  20                                         7.5

Putting George in front of the Skyranger for the mission.. useless git .. We've given him a power suit though.

[humbe]

The UFO landed quickly, so was a bit unsure if we'd manage to delay until daytime, but we tried and it worked out.



George was shot with a plasma gun, but survived with minor injuries with the new armor. Awesome. Thus, no casualties to report.



Saw some activity in South Eastern Asia late in the 14th of March, and scrambled to patrol, but failed to find anything. Still patrolling when 15th comes and gives us decoders. Decoders show nothing, so guessing it was a very small UFO we failed to intercept.

Yay.. Three decoders online. Starting building a second hangar in Great Falls and Weinan. What to stuff in the first? With Skyrangers we could get to landing sites quicker. With interceptors we could down more UFOs taking the mission when we had time.

I guess we will move the second skyranger to Weinan and get some soldiers over there. Then consider whether to get interceptor or Skyranger for Great Falls base. We might even juggle them around month for month based on where there's activity.

As there seems to be activity in Asia this month, we're buying 12 soldiers there, and transferring 4 experienced ones from San Marino to make a strike team there. Also buying some flares, grenades, and a missile launcher to add some utility..

18th of March, and we see a terror UFO coming up in Asia..



Shooting it down is sadly not an option, so we'll just have to await they starting their terror mission. By not starting to fly against it immediately, we should manage to make it a day mission..



We started off spotting 2 floaters from the ranger, and as we killed one of the, we removed a wall spotting a third with view to the ranger. It's turn 1 so they do react and shoot back, but we're saved by the power suits and escape the mission without casualties. Having a single flying suit on a sniper helps as we can fly high to more easily get line of sight.

[humbe]

In the morning, 06:00 the 19th of March, radar shows a large scout going for alien harvest in North Africa. Our assault team hasn't come back from terror mission yet, so we're sending the new Weinan team to hopefully assault them. As their fresh and far away, we decide to take the interceptor and shoot the UFO down. When we're sure they'll make it in time, and they'll likely face a few less aliens.

The new team is:

                   Starting stats                          Current stats
            TU Sta Hlt Brv Rea Acc Thr Mel Str   TU Sta Hlt Brv Rea Acc Thr Mel Str  Score
Halle       60  69  27  50  33  46  73  37  37                                           5
Russel      55  50  26  30  42  64  51  21  28                                         4.5
Jennifer    57  52  30  30  43  52  74  24  32                                           5
Michael     53  42  26  30  50  53  63  22  40                                           5
Matt        56  69  38  40  39  64  63  31  24                                         5.5
Liam        57  63  31  10  46  61  50  26  30                                           6
Denzel      52  56  36  30  54  60  69  35  32                                           6
Eric        58  57  36  50  34  60  75  27  37                                           6
Karl        58  65  26  50  38  65  64  26  21                                         6.5
Nicolas     59  56  27  50  51  49  58  27  24   63  62  32  50  51  52  58  27  27    6.5
Steven      55  41  38  20  49  69  53  40  26   66  55  45  20  49  76  54  40  40      7
Sigourney   59  65  34  30  51  64  56  27  20                                         6.5
Kate        58  51  37  60  46  70  77  20  40   64  65  44  60  46  71  77  20  48      8
Michelle    60  42  39  10  55  67  55  31  35   72  58  50  10  55  76  57  31  54      8
Dolph       53  61  33  60  51  67  62  38  26                                         7.5
Bruce       58  61  35  60  58  69  58  34  32                                           9


Nicolas, Steven, Kate & Michelle are experienced soldiers from the San Marino team that transferred to help out the recruits. We've managed to equip all with laser rifles, but there are very few armors among them. One flying suit and 4 personal armor suits. Lets hope they can deal with it..



In North Africa we were in desert which was pretty excellent for fighting. We could put snipers all over the place, and hide a spotter behind a hill who could walk up and check if any aliens had come out last turn. Our snipers weren't that far away so they weren't 100% safe, but that meant they got of some reaction shots too. They only managed to shoot once at us when walking out of the UFO and thankfully that was a miss.



Excellent start for the new team. Most got promoted to squaddies, and that ended up in promotions for several in the main assault team. It seems the UFO took little damage when shot down, so we even got Elerium from it. Starting to get a lot of Elerium so we've had to start dividing it around our bases as it takes up quite a bit of storage space.

07:00 the 7th of March, the alloys we got from the last mission finished transfer to San Marino, and we can resume building flying suits. Power/Flying suits have proved very useful for survival.

22nd of March we finish researching heavy plasma.. Putting all effort into clip to get to cannon fast. The 23rd we finished researching the clip and starting to research plasma cannons.

The 24th we finish hangars in the last 3 bases. 1 day to decoders complete. Starting building a second hangar there too, so we have good hangar capacity when we need it. They are fairly cheap anyhow.

25th of March. Eureka.. We finish the last 3 decoders. Now we have 6 decoders alive.. And here you can see the massive coverage:


The three first bases cover all the way to the pole, and cover all land in the northern hemisphere and even North Africa..

The Africa and Brazil bases ensure we cover all of the atlantic too..

For the Australia base to cover New Zealand and Fiji it's positioned a bit too far east to cover all of the Indian Ocean, so there's a fairly small coverage gap from the Indian Ocean and southwards. In addition, Antarctica don't have coverage. We'll build a 7th base here at some point in time to rectify that. As a matter of fact, we have some spare money right now, and it takes time to build a base, so lets just start it off, and see if we can come up with a better base defense design here as we have no rush..

Lastly there's a huge gap in the pacific. There just isn't any good island to put another base on. No French Polynesia on the map? No place for the aliens to land there though, and not a typical area for them to fly. Don't expect the hole to be significant at all.

That marks the end of the activity report scanning. Now we can just let our radars do the work, and detect most UFOs coming into Earth within the first 30 minutes, and even decode signals as to where they're heading and what mission they're on, so this will significantly simplify planning.

[humbe]

Soon we're out of alloys to create more armor. Main assault team now has 4 power suits, 6 flying suits and 4 personal armor suits. The new team has 1 power, 3 flying and 6 personal armors, leaving 4 members without any if we fill the skyranger.

The flying suit has even better armor than the power suit, and can fly to boot, but with a flying suit, you spend a lot of extra TU to get down. So wondering about keeping a few power suit wearers in front of the skyranger, which can cheaply get of the ramp and down to the ground to spot around the plane. So maybe 4 in front in power suits, and the remaining 10 in flying suits. Don't think we're going to start producing our own alloys currently though, as we're a bit short on cash too after starting the 7th base, and building plasma cannons will cost $226.000 per unit.

26th of March and we invent Plasma Cannons. UFO construction and better crafts are a natural next step, but before going there, I think we'll research a medikit first. Would be nice to be able to save people getting fatal wounds in combat. Have already lost a handful of soldiers to fatal wounds, and as we now have much better armor, we'll potentially get more soldiers that end up hurt rather than dead.

Better crafts aren't all the critical anyhow, as long as it's preferable to attack UFOs on the ground (to get more loot). Now we also have good coverage and should be able to intercept most UFOs on the ground, at least if we're ok with night missions. We're not, but we'll deal with it. With flares it's not a disaster. Now that we have plasma beams, we can shoot down terror UFOs which will be the most critical ones to shoot down, to avoid a terror mission where we should try to save civilians. Interceptors don't have unlimited range though, so we should station some more around the globe.

We start building 2 cannons immediately, and they complete 13:00 hours. Stingrays/cannons could still be useful to not totally destroy very small and small scouts, but the chance of shooting down a very small UFO is so slim anyhow, and the scouts we're going to try and attack on the ground instead. Thus, we're going to free up general storage space by selling all conventional craft weapons. Storing missiles is taking up a lot of general storage space.

28th of March we finish researching the Medi-Kit. Anything else worth delaying better crafts for? For the engineering downtime it would be nice to be able to build laser cannons that private firms crave around here, but we're hoping to keep our engineers busy building crafts and armor and the like, so it's not a priority. A motion scanner could be useful, but I think we'll manage. The small launcher could be a very good addition when trying to get a sectoid leader though. But with several stunrods and mind probes to check remaining TUs of the leader, I think we should manage without that too. Lets go for UFO bits next. At least up to Firestorm.

Due to lack of funds, we're limited to building around 10 medikits for now.. No alien activity to capitalize on soon?

30th of March we finish researching UFO construction. New Fighter Craft next.. 05:00 we finish building 10 medikits, and we've got $6.764 left in bank. We transfer 5 medikits to Weinan, and goes back to manufacturing laser rifles for profits. At 16:00 they arrive in Weinan. 11 hours to ship goods from Italy to China.. Not bad.

At 18:30 hours we finally spot some alien activity.



Likely the last activity this month. Some more loot to sell sounds good. Not sure what will happen to funding, but not surprised if we end up getting bills that are higher than the funding, as we've enlisted quite a few more people that wants wages.

Night has just started in Africa, but the UFO is currently over Australia so may be some time before it lands still. It sounds likely that it'll land during nighttime though, so I guess testing out the new plasma cannons to shoot it down is the simplest way of getting a day mission.

These new plasma cannons make mincemeat of the UFO which don't have any chance of retaliating.

[humbe]

We put our 5 medikits on the 5 in front of the skyranger. The most likely people to be used as spotters and get hurt.



Another desert mission. Sounds good to me.. But we're deploying right outside the entrance to the UFO. Looks a bit dangerous as the aliens can suddenly pop out and see us fairly close, and might even think that a grenade in here would be a good thing.

Silly George needs 6 shots before he takes down the floater under our skyranger. At this low range, I'd expect better even at 56 firing accuracy.

Jason arms a proximity grenade and hands it to Harrison that moves out and throws it outside the UFO. Hopefully they won't come out in numbers next turn, and if one comes out the grenade will take him down while we have time to deploy.

A floater indeed exits the UFO and gets taken out by the proximity grenade. Another floater shoots at us from north west. We'll likely be able to spot him with mutual surprise easy and snipe him down. Keanu takes him out on first shot. 84 firing accuracy is pretty decent.



We position Jason to hide behind the skyranger and to fly on top of it and look for aliens, hopefully seeing them with mutual surprise so we can snipe them down. Also putting some spotters off to the west to move back and forth to try and detect any oncoming aliens from there before snipers are spotted. Works like a charm, and we can shoot down the rest of the aliens without any aliens getting a shot of.



As we shot it down, few aliens to kill, and no elerium, but a simple fight at least.

[humbe]

Excellent score for March, but as our expenses are going up faster than our income, we have a budged deficit. -882.316 dollars.

Everyone is happy except for India and Nigeria that refuse to up our funding, but almost a million extra is more than we were expecting.

As we've researched heavy plasma, we've hung onto 8 heavy plasma guns just to be able to use them in a critical mission like base defense, but with this high deficit we should sell to get above ground. Selling the 8 stored heavy plasma, and the single UFO power source and navi I had saved up for a firestorm, we're back at positive $820.484.

We'll get more of the stuff anyhow. Likely before we need it anyhow.

So, that's 3 months into the operation. We've gotten world decoder coverage so we're now seeing everything happening. We've got two decent assault teams of 16 soldiers each with some armor, laser rifles and even some medikits. We've got plasma cannons for our interceptors, so we can shoot down most craft. Just need to get a few more interceptors and build some more cannons to be able to shoot down most activity if wanted.

The only real lack is not being able to capture a sectoid leader yet. Can't remember going to April before seeing one before. Maybe we'll find an ethereal first.

We're low on money, but we're not in dire need of more. We have a well sized engineering and research crew and quite a few soldiers, and there's no more base facilities critical to build fast.

[humbe]

Jungle mission against small scout with snakemen. We saw two snakemen as we deployed in turn 2, but they were close and we managed to shoot them down with the spotters coming out. (Trying to avoid they having time for reaction shots seeing others moving too)

Flying suits on snipers were excellent. Moved them up towards the corner, and as we spotted the aliens they came down one after the other.



Aliens seems to be very fast to move out of their UFOs compared to the original game. I can't remember the last time I thought I had to enter a UFO to flush out the rest. They have typically all exited before I get to it. In the old game, I could sit and press end turn 20 times in a row, and still the aliens were in the UFO waiting for me to enter.

[humbe]

2nd of March we finish researching New Fighter Craft. Moving on to New Fighter-Transporter.
5th of March we finish New Fighter-Transporter. Ultimate craft next.
05:00 on the 5th we finish 6 more flying suits. Starting to produce 3 more.

6th of March we see some activity again. Large scout with snakeman on terror mission in Southern Africa, currently over Mongolia. Nice to know where he's going.. Scraming main assault team again.



It's a jungle mission. Dangerous. They can be hiding lots of places. We're clearing the jungle fairly easily. Flying high we manage to find angles working from pretty far away for our snipers. Also, if we don't manage to kill what we see, they often don't come for us straight away in next turn anyhow.

We position around UFO opening and try to move in and out to spot, but an alien is moving too fast and shoots Tom. He is knocked unconscious and we hurry over with a medikit. I think we saved him just before he woud have bled to death. 22 days to recover though. But saved by the suit again.

[wcho035]

Lastly there's a huge gap in the pacific. There just isn't any good island to put another base on. No French Polynesia on the map? No place for the aliens to land there though, and not a typical area for them to fly. Don't expect the whole to be significant at all.

Who need islands for building bases? 

[humbe]

Oh.. Crap.. Quoted saying "the whole".. I guess I have to start proofreading before I push post

[humbe]

And suddenly we spot the first medium+ sized UFO (except for the terror UFOs seen). Harvest mission this time. And floaters.. So I guess there'll only be snakemen and floaters this month. Should have skipped a few sectoid scouts first month to get to a larger sectoid ship then..



As it's a bigger ship than normal, we'll send the main team again. Looks to be a day mission.



A rough start. We spot 3 aliens looking straight into the skyranger. Two on the roof and one behind window in second floor. Thankfully we primed a smoke grenade before opening the door. If we just drop it on the floor and await the smoke, I'm hoping they won't see us anymore.

Smoke dropped, turn ended.. They lost line of sight, but one of them moved towards us, but we thankfully shot him down with a reaction shot before he could get a shot off. We forgot that we hadn't dropped smoke on ground level yet and moved a tile out, but thankfully no reaction shots. We move back in and drop smoke downwards too..




We have now cleared everything outside the UFO (hopefully). Guarding the doors. Having a spotter moving closer to the door and returning each turn, hopefully spotting anyone moving out in our turn. Though if they come out and move in the right direction, they can get to our troops in one turn. But hopefully they'll shoot at the closest one if so, which should be a spotter.

Heh.. Exactly. Pressed end turn, and a floater moved out and shot George dead in one shot. With his 20 bravery, 33 reaction and 55 accuracy, it's not a big loss though.. Should we await them coming out of the UFO or storm it?

Decided to camp the entrances for now. Suddenly Will dies too. He had gotten friendly laser fire and I missed that he had fatal wounds. Has had fatal wounds for many many turns, so just my fault that I didn't use medpac.. Grr.. Should get a warning. Easy to miss..



The leader came out too. We saw it was a leader and from turn timer it sounded likely he was the last guy. Wondered if we should try to stun him, but as he was out in the open that would be dangerous with stunrods. I'd rather want to stun a sectoid leader though. Doesn't help us with a non-sectoid leader without a commander.

George and Will died. They were fairly expendable at least..

Not long after, we see a similar craft. Another harvester with floaters going to North Africa. It's currently over Mongolia, but will reach North Africa early in the night. We decide to shoot it down so we can delay mission until daytime. We can shoot it down safely with our new plasma beams. Also, we only have 12 soldiers to go on mission currently, and we're running out of soldiers I consider expendable :/..

It's only our 3rd crash site.



It's a desert mission which suits us fine. But what is Harrison doing first in the Skyranger? He's definately not expendable with 50 bravery, 60 reactions and 62 firing accuracy. That's pretty good.. Better be careful. Dropping smoke at level 1 first.



What??.. There's smoke over there?.. Lets turn around and look the other way.. Stupid aliens



The desert have hills, including a nice one facing the UFO entrances, which I could hide behind and pop up to spot aliens with mutual surprise.. So we managed this one fine without casualties.. Wasn't inside this UFO either..