Hello, citizens. Dr Vahlen's just finished her work on the alien navigational computers meaning we can now build Satellite Nexus installations.
These let us monitor more than one satellite at once but they require actual alien navigational computers to build. For that, we rely on UFO landings and crashes. We won't have any of those for a little while yet. I've also started research into a new fighter craft. That'll take a while to complete, but it's worth it.
Meanwhile...
"News just in..."
"y u do dis aleins"
dun dun dun DUN
aleins
fleeeeee
"What's the sound?"
"KKKLKKALKLKYLKLKYKKKHRAAAKK"
"*Wilhelm scream*"
Time to saddle up, it's a terror mission!
For this, we want the best equipped and armed soldiers we can field. I've bought a Railgun for Dabir, two heavy lasers for Zhang and Flan and sold off as much stuff on the Gray Market that I can afford in order to purchase Squad Size and Iron Will upgrades. I am serious about this, Terror missions have huge potential to go wrong.
We're taking the top six soldiers from the barracks today. I don't want any fuckups. Everyone's Aim is at least 70 before we start, so hopefully we'll get a decent amount of fire on target when it's needed.
"Laaast Christmas, I gave you my heart,
But the very next day, you gave it away,
This year, to save me from tears,
I'll give it to someone special, special."
This map is based around a warehouse near the docks. It's pretty big and there's a lot of cover, so I'm not sure how well Alex will do, but the building is climbable, so there's hope yet.
In Terror Missions, there are civilians around the map who move at the end of the aliens' turn. They're our primary objective. Getting a squad member into that circle will "save" the civilian, give them the confidence to get to the Skyranger out of danger. The aliens will split their attention between the civvies and the squad, so in some ways it's pretty easy to survive, but very easy to get a bad rating on the mission review by letting too many civilians get killed.
The types of aliens we find on these missions vary. Floaters are pretty common; the aliens' main objective is to kill civilians, so something mobile to find and kill weaponless humans is perfect.
However, the alien we meet in this type of map that is totally invariable is the Chryssalid. These aliens use only melee attacks and land incredible amounts of damage. If they kill a human, they impregnate it and turn it into a zombie. This is the main threat from them: they make more enemies.
Civilians are prime targets for Chryssalids and they're our main focus. If you get a choice between aliens, go for the purple thing with claws.
At 8 health, they'll still get squashed by a lot of things, including railguns, as you can see above, but they're
fast. They will very quickly seek and kill anyone that they focus on.
They deal large amounts of damage through melee attacks. Dabir is lucky due to his armour and abilities, but if that was a human, they'd probably panic, if not get killed in the first instance.
Dabir, however, can punch back.
Right back.
Zhang is a very valuable member of the team, but I might only deploy him as a high level bench member from now on. He'll cameo in terror missions, but he's going to be a secondary choice henceforth.
Pure fighting the good fight, there.
81% against something on the other side of the map? Yes, please. Let's take a look at the breakdown, something we've mostly ignored up until now.
Note the Chance to hit. Aim is ranked at 111% because that's Alex's base aim score. Everything else is subtracted or added from that.
Kill confirmed.
There was one other Floater on the map but it made the mistake of moving right into Alex's line of sight.
Note the Civilians saved box unique to Terror missions. The civilians were all killed offscreen somewhere. We had a counter in the top right of the screen, but there were some screams at the start of our turns indicating deaths of non-combatants. Alex really cleaned up here.
Pure's promotion is welcome but somewhat unexpected. However, with that nickname...
... we know what had to be done.
I'm giving Pure the ability Field Medic. This means we finally have a decent medic on the team. Took us bloody long enough.
The reward for completing the Terror Mission is a wonderful bonus: the entire continent calms down. This means that sometimes, getting lucky with where terror missions happen can save your entire game.
Now the hard grind is over, we can afford to put troops in for genetic modification. I'm going to put Alex up for some changes to make der Ubermann, but additionally, I'm going to think about modifying Garo when I have more money. Genetic modifications don't change a soldier's class, but they cannot be administered to a MEC trooper. There are no other drawbacks to having a soldier genetically modified, but there is a Second Wave setting (wonderfully named "Mind Hates Matter") that makes them incompatible with psychic power. This means that genetic modifications are essentially out of the question until the endgame.
This is the screen for Genetic Modification. You can only choose one Gene mod per body region, and you have to do research to discover all of them. You can have more than one modification made at a time, but for now, I'll just have one.
Notice the cost of genetic modification is a lot less than for cybernetics. This is reflected in the payoffs. Cybernetic augmentation provides you with an entirely new tank of a character. Gene mods merely supplement them.
That's it for three days. However, before we go...
Well, it looks like Dabir and SK are getting on just fine. Or maybe SK's drinking away his problems of NOT LANDING A SINGLE HIT and Dabir's giving him a pep talk. We'll deploy him next mission, see if he's improved in private.