[axident]

Originally posted by Juan Rayo@Apr 4 2005, 07:06 AM
Whatever happened to Avenger 2?

“New Albion” complex. X-COM central Command. January 03, 2000.* 1100 hours.
---
Aide: sir? Commander Rayo sir?

Commander Rayo:* hey, what is it soldier?

Aide: well, it’s the damnest thing sir, begging you pardon, but we haven’t heard from the “Santa María” in a couple of hours…

Commander Rayo: the “Santa María”? that’s Coronel Ruhskin’s ship. (scratches chin) I dunno, why is this a problem? That’s a very capable crew he has, and the ship is a brand new AVENGER class craft, pride of the force.

Aide: well, that’s just the thing sir, they were called upon Nairobi to stop an ATerror operation in progress, they downed an alien craft and decided to land and mope up. Last we heard, they were in site and ready to proceed, and then we just lost them…

C, Rayo: (Menacingly) “Lost” them?

Aide: (gulp) er, well, yes sir. No radio contact, no static, nada. But our scanners don’t pick up any residual earth treated E-115 radiation, so we don’t think it was destroyed.

C. Rayo: hmmmm. Call SurafriCOM, get them on alert, tell them to send a couple of Firestorms, do some air recon. It IS strange… right now, we can handle pretty much ANYTHING those sneaky bastards can throw at us, even the Mutons are no match for a high ranked psi officer like Rushkin… so what could be the hold up? *shrugs)
Well, you have your orders (starts walking away).

Aide: yes sir!

C. Rayo: (turns around) one more thing kid. If you have no news in an hour, let me know… and tell the chief down in engineering to start prepping the “Batavia”, we might want to take her out ourselves and visit Nairobi…

Aide: yes sir.

C. Rayo: hmm, odd indeed. Whatever happened to Avenger 2?
--

I'll tell you guys what happened. ETHEREALS and Sectopoids happened*
I finally got a signal from an Ethereal ship, attempting to carry out a terror mission in Africa. Dispatched and Avenger with some troops, I dunno, not as good as my "elite" forces but pretty good anyway, psi trained and experienced soldiers them all. They didn't have a chance.

First Sectopoids went down fast, couple of plasma and laser shots mixed brought them down, and I even mind controlled one of them (plus an Ethereal) and brought them right in front of my troops to be shot at short range. Then, all of a sudden, my people were being shot from every direction, and 3 of them got mind controlled (in the same turn, mind you) so they killed most of my surviving crew. It was over in a turn. ARGHHH!!! (bangs head against wall some more).

I'll be sendind in my elite team this time, see how THEY fare.* Any tips on how to best fight these critters are, as always, welcomed. Thanks.

Sectopods: 145 front armor (on Superhuman difficulty, anyway). Use blaster bombs, don't bother with anything else except Mind Control, if you happen to have a high-psi strength soldier with 80+ psi skill.

Ethereals aren't that hard if you have high-psi soldiers (and by that, I mean soldiers with at least 80 psi strength; psi skill is irrelevant and only good when you want to MC/panic aliens with psi-amps), so just buy hundreds of soldiers at a time, sack the guys with low stats (especially if they have less than 40 or 50 bravery), and stuff the rest into a lot of psi labs. After a month, sack the ones that were low-psi. Repeat this process until you have a lots of high-psi guys. Don't mix the high-psi guys with low-psi guys at first.. separate them so one Avenger is full of high-psi soldiers with HP and blaster bombs. That is your anti-MC crew. 6 high-psi soldiers is way better than 26 mixed high-psi and low-psi soldiers, because the moment a low-psi soldier gets MC, he or she'll start killing off all of the other soldiers--including the high-psi soldiers.

The other Skyrangers and Avengers can carry general-purpose soldiers who may or may not have high psi; they are for everything else.