Some more research. Just basic materials stuff this time, which we're not likely to use, but oh well. Progress towards eventual development of superior armor is good. We're going to start on lasers now.
The Council's happy with us at least, but god are we broke. Half of the money that came in went right out again and we're short on power and we need more money for satellites and uplinks and the lasers we hope to have soonish.
In any case, UFO. Raven-2, with Scotty at the controls, is launched to engage. The battle is actually hard, with the interceptor taking nearly 50% damage from repeated hits. The UFO crashes pretty much right outside our base.
The Skyranger is outbound. Polpolion, Talon 1024, Esarai, and rookie Rodo. We're hoping Rodo actually comes back. And we still need to capture an alien.
Somebody isn't going to be taking their deer home. Actually, does Germany even do hunting seasons at all? Somebody call The E! Maybe we have to arrest poachers too!
Uh, new guys. Talon fires on them reaction during the turn, but it's a wash. Shotguns and range don't mix. Talon pulls back on our turn to try and lure them back into the rest of the team, who move into cover predicated on this idea. I really hope this works...
It does. Sort of. One Floater, as we're calling them now, is now stuck in the open where both Talon and Rodo can see it, and has already absorbed reaction fire from Rodo that injured it. It shoots back rather than grab cover, missing Rodo.
The other has used a somewhat annoying ability of Floaters to make a jet-powered jump across a great distance without drawing reaction fire. It was trying to find our flank, and in a sense it did. It even landed in good cover. But it's also used up all its actions for this turn and is within easy striking distance of Polpolion and Esarai, both of whom could move right up next to it and blow its head off. Whoops!
The first Floater is sitting out in the open with a thumb up its butt. It's out of ideas, out of actions to move or shoot, out of time as the turn clicks over, and now with Rodo firing on it also out of remaining hitpoints. Congrats on making Squaddie.
Esarai tries to stun the second, but I derped out about LOS somehow, and so instead Polpolion jumps in behind it and with a one-square-perfectly-clear-shot kills it. (Recurring theme this mission.)
Something I haven't noted before now but which I probably should have: your troops can not only see the aliens, but also hear them clomping around. (So can you, which is actually petty helpful once you learn to distingush the sounds they make.)
Moving in a couple of Sectoids run out to meet us, and then run back inside for cover.
We move in a bit more and then up pops an Outsider. It moves around a bit, and then like the other Outsider, it exposes itself to fire from a flanker. Granted it's only a 12% shot from Polpolion due to the range. He made it anyways. (
Damn.)
The aliens, noticing we're assault-heavy, try to overwatch to keep us away. Talon sucks up their overwatch shot closing in again, and Polpolion tosses a grenade to clear out their cover and hurt them. Damaged and distracted, they don't overwatch again the next turn. Talon runs up and tasers one of the Sectoids into submission.
Polpolion runs up, puts a shotgun muzzle between the last Sectoid's eyes, and pulls the trigger. (Seriously look at that picture, tell me that's not exactly what happened!)
Mission complete. This was, despite the appearance of a new alien species, much smoother than the previous mission. Being able to temporarily reverse the usual equation and force the Floaters to attack into the dark to get us provided a very useful advantage and is one we'll have to keep in mind for the for the future. Polpolion deserves special mention for killing three aliens, one with an extremely difficult shot, and both Polpolion and Talon demonstrated a willingness to close with the enemy that was essential to our success.
We've switched research temporarily to the captured Sectoid's interrogation, as we suspect what we learn from it will be more interesting than anything in our laser research. (And I know we get research credit on lasers from it.)
