My first real OpenXCom challenge. Superhuman Ironman vanilla.

[humbe]

(Map above is multiple screenshots put together..)

With psi attacks we can map up the entire base without leaving the loft we started in.. We used first turn to drop smoke grenades down on level below. I didn't seem to be able to throw from top to bottom floor before I had explored the below, but after first one took the elevator down, somebody on top could throw a grenade down.. One person went down and up again and looked around. Saw nothing.. Then a couple of turns where we went down, saw nothing, and tried to throw a flare in a direction we couldn't see very far, and then move back up on the loft. After a few turns we spotted the first muton and mind controlled him, and only a few turns after we had mapped the entire base, with just a couple of muton casualties..

After the turn from the image above, the turn timer seemed instant, as if we had mind controlled everyone, so think this is about it. Max one more alien I think, but I'm guessing none. All the mutons have dropped their weapons, so only the terror troops should present a risk unless we've missed an alien.

Trouble now is to keep track of where we left all the mind controlled aliens so we can reacquire them next turn. Positioning them in a chain so one of them see the next, works very well as we by mind controlling one will spot the next one. Not so easy everywhere while exploring fast though, so have to remember a few aliens that need to move to spot the next one, and in the image above, the muton all to the east (or north east if you tilt your head right) have explored too fast and likely won't be reacquired next turn. Only two entrance to cover though, and he's unarmed and it looked to be noone else there, so we expect to seem him come to us soon. The turn after we confirmed that the base isn't anything more than what we see above. There's a second floor on some modules, and we've cleared them and we're moving out some of our troops to make it easier to spot all aliens next turn...

Now the question is where to gather them for some reaction and fire practice.. The control center looks interesting as it's only one exit to cover. There's enough mutons for everyone to empty a pistol clip, so I think we'll just starting to execute the terror units which suddenly can become dangerous if we forget to mind control them a turn..

[humbe]

The base assault ended in lots of experience.


After taking out many UFOs, we see an infiltration mission. We shoot it down, but I'm guessing it'll happen sooner or later regardless.. Not this month though..


September was also a good month. A supply ship got to the alien base at the very end of the month. Expected base to be a muton base though, but the supply ship was filled with sectoids.. Hmm..

We're training yet another bunch of soldiers to detect psionic skill.. Expecting this to be the last bunch we'll train at least.. After this we should be able to have base defense everywhere and two squads all with decent psionic strength.. Jason is healed in another week. If we don't get more wounded by then, we'll have all our soldiers in good shape.

There's been a lot of retaliation missions this month. Many from battleships that we've left alone, but no attacks on any base yet.. Should one come I think we should be able to survive it.. We now also have quite a bit of base defense, so less aliens should get through.

[humbe]

Didn't take long into October before we had our first base attack.. This one was towards Alice Springs (Australia)

We shot it down...



This is how most of our bases look at this point:



We have a fourth missile defense being built, and we also have a grav shield, so we had 6 shots this time, and took the UFO down after 3. Thus sounds like we should have a good chance to take down most of the UFOs coming at us.. The two psi-labs have made us able to screen a ton of soldiers. 110 each month. We've recently built the base defense bits, and two more general stores to be able to stock up a bit more in each base.. Two was really enough, but we don't need the money at this point, so stocking up a lot more than we need to. Maybe we should equip everyone on final mission with a blaster launcher?

Not ideal from a base defense point of view. I prioritized being able to complete base defense missions early, but starting so close to the aliens does make it risky. The plan has been to take the access lift immediately, and then just shoot down the aliens as they come through the hangars..

While we're at it, lets show the two bases that differ:



This is the first base.. After we dumped most of the scientists, we demolished two living quarters at the sides of the access lift, so now we only have one door to guard at the access lift. It doesn't have space for that fourth missile defense, but shouldn't matter much.  We destroyed two research labs to build some more defense. We could probably demolish the alien containment center and the research lab too at this point though.



We built this base just to cover the last bits of land with hyper-wave decoders.. Figured we could use it to store extra stuff, and then we figured we could use it as a second production site. Tested out base design for optimal base defense. However, will likely never see an attack here to test it out..

[humbe]

October is ticking along.. More various missions.. Intercepting and shooting down retaliation missions that aren't battleship, and infiltration missions, and some other missions that would otherwise become a night mission, or where too many things happened at once. Otherwise trying to take UFOs while landed.. Many battleships have attacked Australia base, but base defense have shot down all so far..

Our main squad is close to fully trained, having trained the same group for almost two months.

Here's another training mission, showcasing the power of psionics:



This is how it looks in turn 1 after we've mind controlled the only muton we saw initially, and used him to scout more, and chaining on. Not a single dude have moved out of the Avenger yet, and I'm pretty sure we have mind controlled every alien. In addition to those spottable in the picture, there's two mutons on lower level of ship, 2 purple blobs, and 1 flying blob. The mutons have great camouflage, green on green. Hard to notice the one underneath the avenger, and the one behind the UFO.

All the mutons have been disarmed, so only the terror units pose a threat, and only the flying blobs have a ranged attack.

[humbe]

October done.. Another good month.. More of the same.. I guess I should just do the final mission.. Not much to wait for..



Funding is now 16.148.000. Nothing from US, but everyone else is happy and have increased funding.

We've loaded after selling tons of artifacts though. No need for any more money. Was pondering whether to try once without being able to live on funding from countries alone, but how would I then get rid of artifacts so I can have free space on storage units to buy stuff we need?



After training yet another 110 soldiers, we now have a good amount of psi-strong soldiers and have sacked the rest. We could always redistribute the psi-team, getting ~6 psi-strong soldiers per base, and train another 20 soldiers to be awesome. But why should we.. I think we'll just do the final mission now..

We've trained and trained, using psionics to make it easy.. Not really sure why.. Was considering trying to make it a year before ending the game, but it's getting repetitive.

Most of our bases does now look like this:



We managed to build defense before anyone found our bases, and they've only found australian base upto now, so even if we would fail to defend it we'd still be ok losing one base. But we've also got good base defense now, so we should handle the aliens regardless, having a couple of psi-strong soldiers per base.

We now have 6 firestorms and have the 6th avenger in production.

[humbe]

Ok.. Final mission.. And here's the loadout..


8x of these in front, though only the first with a motion scanner. To use as scouts until we see aliens, and with firepower to shoot them down, or a psi-amp do we need anything extra.


8x of these behind the others. Overkill deluxe.. But lets have some fun..


8x of these, with psi-amp ready to help out..


And 2x last here. Not that we need the mind probe with psi-amps, but it's not that they need a weapon either.

Turn 1 we weren't able to spot anyone, so we dropped smoke at avenger level and ground level and threw out 2 flares.. In turn 2 we moved some scouts out and soon recruited more scouts.
Here's the state at the end of turn 2:

[humbe]

How did this exit work again? Do I have to press abandon button? It says I have 24 in exit area. Where did I hide the last 2?

Turns out there was a couple of aliens that got conscious again, so I had to take out those, and then I did that I finished and moved on with all. Probably wouldn't have had to move them to the exit area in the first place..



Yay...



Start looks like a standard base assault on earth.. It's been a while since I did the final mission so my memory is shady.. I thought I'd remember the last mission having a huge elevator where we moved down to the base with the avenger on top floor, but maybe I'm remembering it wrong..

[The Martian]

You've almost got it! Stay cautious, this part can be brutal.

Start looks like a standard base assault on earth.. It's been a while since I did the final mission so my memory is shady.. I thought I'd remember the last mission having a huge elevator where we moved down to the base with the avenger on top floor, but maybe I'm remembering it wrong..

Sadly not... perhaps the PS1 version was like that?

[humbe]

After turn 1, we have spotted quite a few aliens and mapped out a lot of areas..

Guessing the brain is upstairs on the western end there..

Have tried to position aliens in junctures to easily re-aquire them next turn, then going to start clear areas and move out of them.

[humbe]

In turn two, we spotted ethereals below the brain area.. We went up and found it. With enough Ethereals there we ordered them to kill the brain.. And then Victory!!!





And finally the score..

[humbe]

I notice that some of the score sounds wrong..

For instance, we've hired much more than 25 scientists, but we had 25 scientists hired when we went for final mission. We've also hired much more soldiers. The one failed mission was when we attacked the first base without bringing flares, so we went straight back to await flares incoming. That was zero score. The worst score was probably in a small mission with multiple deaths.

Almost all deaths of soldiers happened prior to us having psi control. Then everything is easy. We of course delayed a lot longer than we needed to, but felt nice to build up all the bases being ready for anything..

I guess next play through will be with some constraints on psionics use. It makes the game way easy. It's still possible to lose soldiers early in a fight before you've recruited enough alien scouts, but if one is careful until that happens, the chance of losing one is fairly slim.

[humbe]

Some game notes/learnings/remarks:

• Using graphs to scan for activity works fairly well and avoid early game failure by not detecting enough, but was very tedious.
• Using expendable soldiers as scouts made it possible to still train and keep the rest alive even on Ironman.
• Using smoke grenades on turn 1 and awaiting moving out until turn 2 was a lot of help surviving transport exit.
• Psionics is as I already know totally overpowered, and made the game cakewalk after we got it. New to me was that we got xp for psionic failures, and one can panic already panicked alien, so it was really easy to level it fast.
• Even on ironman were we lost 50 soldiers, bravery still didn't really seem to matter.
• As soldiers health grows, with armor, they have a good chance of surviving even a heavy plasma hit.
• Camping seemed the safest way to take UFOs prior to psionics but the tactic is boring. (try to stay far enough away from aliens so they don't spot you in their turn, and then spot to move anyone having exited chokepoint and kill them and move back.)
• The risk of base attack seems low, especially if you try to take on UFOs on the ground when you can and shoot down scouts on retaliation missions ASAP. No base defense at all would have worked out fine for us.
• Having one troop transport is enough. When there's too much activity for one transport, use interceptors with plasma beams to take down all but one.
• Bringing along a pistol with a clip for everyone makes it way easier to train reactions/accuracy. Doing very little damage is very useful as you get xp per actual hit and number of aliens are limited.
• Terror units are great for practice, as they have decent armor so can withstand many pistol hits. Those with melee attacks only can also be set up in situations where training is safe also without psionics.
• It seems to be possible for a terror unit with melee attack to reaction fire if you shoot it at point blank range. I had a death I couldn't explain otherwise, but it sounds a bit strange.
• In OpenXCom, a psi lab doesn't train you past 100 either.

[humbe]

Sadly not... perhaps the PS1 version was like that?

Right.. I see there's a mod to use PSX version of Cydonia map.. I played on PC but not 100% sure what version. I'll try to enable that option and see what I get next time around...

[B@R5uk]

Bringing along a pistol with a clip for everyone makes it way easier to train reactions/accuracy. Doing very little damage is very useful as you get xp per actual hit and number of aliens are limited.

Yeah, that's true! For those who play FMP bringing Sub Machine Gun even better as it deal 1 less damage and has 15% SNAP SHOT cost instead of 18% for Pistol. Unfortunately it do not come along with auto reaction experience points count of 12 round clip limit (SMG clip is 30 rounds large), so you have to do it yourself every turn, which will add some fun but waste time.

But that is all nothing compared to smoke grenade! It has crazy RADIUS, counts toward firing accuracy, but deals ZERO damage! Better yet, it counts for every smoked sell occupied by enemy units. See those two Reapers partying together? Get your worst shooter and smoke them! He'll instantly gets 8 exp points, which now easily can be turned 11 and that is +2...+6 to Firing Accuracy by the price of $150 and some otherwise useless pawn TU.

Now, you've started your new game and shot your first scripted scout (turning off missiles and shooting only cannon, of course). But all you have is crappy rookies with low strength and no TU at all? There is a way to train every one! Get each soldier armed smoke and make them unload them all on single present enemy. This will get insane stat boost out of almost nothing. And at the start every stat point counts.