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A Certain Scientific XCOM Project

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[X] Plan Shock and Awe
-[X][MISAKA10033] Holds position and remains on overwatch.
-[X][MISAKA10035] Opens the door for SHIRAI02, and moves into the building second. Takes cover on the interior corner and engages any targets SHIRAI02 does not eliminate. If no targets remain, assume overwatch to the north.
-[X][SHIRAI01] Moves into the building third, taking cover and engaging any remaining alien targets. If no aliens remain, takes an advanced position northward in cover to prepare to complete the building sweep.
-[X][SHIRAI02] Moves into the building and takes cover, orienting to engage the sounds of movement. If necessary, Teleport should be used to acquire good cover and a flanking position, and Telefrag may be used to hit a clustered enemy group if possible.


It should be noted that we have no idea what the interior layout of these buildings are, but we should expect both furniture (this is a dormitory area) and interior walls and obstacles. Hopefully our units can account and adjust for this, as we can't tell if our proposed movement plants them inside a wall or something.

As it stands, this is an aggressive move and an attempt to take out the entire alien pod we are probably hearing in one fell swoop, using the SHIRAI's Teleport ability to avoid any reaction or overwatch fire and grenade them before they can disperse, and then clean up the rest of them with a rapid assault from M35 and S2. Part of the reason for this aggression is that it pushes our assault team into the building and away from being exposed if those EM disturbances turn out to be a drone swarm, so they don't get shot in the back.
 
Are we able to half move to stack up on the door and open it? It'll trigger the aliens and let us have more options on what to do.
 
Ramble said:
Are we able to half move to stack up on the door and open it? It'll trigger the aliens and let us have more options on what to do.
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I'm kinda hoping the "Aliens get a free movement on being spotted" stupidity from XCOM isn't getting ported over. That shit always annoyed me because it made it functionally impossible to ambush the aliens and nearly impossible to catch them clustered up for a good rocketing. Battlescanners were the only way around that piece of irritating mechanics.

So long as it isn't, this is actually a great chance to alpha strike whatever is moving in there, especially if S1 can get a decent Telefrag off.
 
Actually, why not open the door a crack and just chuck a grenade in? We can teleport grenades and don't need to open the door all the way for that. Just an inch wide.
 
Ramble said:
Are we able to half move to stack up on the door and open it? It'll trigger the aliens and let us have more options on what to do.
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You can do that if you want and break it down conditionally, but I don't want to do a separate update for it when the new position isn't substantially different from the current one.

Akritedes said:
I'm kinda hoping the "Aliens get a free movement on being spotted" stupidity from XCOM isn't getting ported over. That shit always annoyed me because it made it functionally impossible to ambush the aliens and nearly impossible to catch them clustered up for a good rocketing. Battlescanners were the only way around that piece of irritating mechanics.

So long as it isn't, this is actually a great chance to alpha strike whatever is moving in there, especially if S1 can get a decent Telefrag off.
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Aliens don't get a free move after being spotted because it's not necessary in quest mechanics. If you catch an alien group by surprise, you'll likely be able to get one or two quick kills before they can reorient themselves towards you.

But that being said, the aliens have received other strategic buffs to compensate for the loss of one of their most valuable tools. Aliens caught severely out of position may attempt to go down firing instead of trying to move to safer cover on their turn, and more advanced alien units (not appearing on this mission) may try to employ common XCOM tactics like overwatch crawling or snipers.

Finally (and this is probably the most important one), alien fireteams will behave differently based on your progress so far. If you immediately wipe an alien group, later aliens on the same mission will play more cautiously to try to avoid dying the same way. If you get into a back and forth firefight that's long enough for the aliens to figure out the true size and positioning of your forces, other nearby squads will aggro onto you even if they haven't been encountered to try to overrun your position.
 
Cautious aliens are good for us I think? Sure the whole fight takes longer, but they also favor self survival over getting a good hit in on us. Great if we want to avoid casualties
 
Macros said:
I like your plan, but I wonder if it wouldn't be worth to use 10033 too. After all, odds are good that the aliens are more numerous than us in there. Though if we're lucky, hitting them hard enough will make them panic and retreat.
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Two big reasons I'm leaving her in place.

1. We still want to have eyes on the outside of the building, and she's placed to both keep eyes on the alleyway and also take shots at anything that comes from the northern building door, with good cover to boot.

2. We're already packing most of our team into a building with an unknown layout, and running a serious risk of being bunched up and suffering for it. There might be enough room for four people to take good cover and firing positions in there, but there probably isn't and getting the SHIRAIs into good firing positions is more important than trying to get the entire team in safely.

As it stands, alien fire teams are usually ~3-5 strong, if I recall, so pushing three of ours in gives us pretty good odds of outright whacking at least two aliens in one go, and decent odds of taking out more, especially if they're bunched up enough for SHIRAI02 to grenade them and catch three or more in the blast. Figure that SHIRAI02 gets one good kill with a grenade, and between S01 and M35 they get another two, and that's almost, if not completely, a full alien team snuffed out. Any survivors are likely to be wounded, reducing their effectiveness, and there's a non-trivial chance that any survivors will break and either panic or run.
 
[X] Plan Blink Bomb Blast
-[X][SHIRAI02] First. Open the door a very tiny crack to get visuals while keeping cover. Teleport a pulled grenade to detonate in the midst of any sighted enemies. If no enemies can be sighted or guessed at, open the door wider and move into the building, taking advantage of any cover.
-[X][MISAKA10033] Holds position and remains on overwatch.
-[X][MISAKA10035] Opens the door and moves into the building. Takes cover on the interior corner and engages any targets SHIRAI02 does not eliminate with Arc Thrower(if only one) or Spark(if multiple). If no targets remain, assume overwatch to the north.
-[X][SHIRAI01] Moves into the building second, taking cover and engaging any remaining alien targets. If no aliens remain, takes an advanced position northward in cover to prepare to complete the building sweep.


Grenade would probably kill or wound any aliens in there, which allows the MISAKA to go for a livecap if only one still lives. And they basically have no chance to react to a grenade teleporting in through the door crack. Even if they happen to be watching the door when the SHIRAI peeks through, she still have cover from the door to reduce injury.
SHIRAI01 would be the plan B if the lightning fails to take care of any.

Also electric attacks beat guns in close quarters.
 
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[X] Plan Blink Bomb Blast
-[X][SHIRAI02] First. Open the door a very tiny crack to get visuals while keeping cover. Teleport a pulled grenade to detonate in the midst of any sighted enemies.
-[X][MISAKA10033] Holds position and remains on overwatch.
-[X][MISAKA10035] Opens the door and moves into the building. Takes cover on the interior corner and engages any targets SHIRAI02 does not eliminate with Arc Thrower(if only one) or Spark(if multiple). If no targets remain, assume overwatch to the north.
-[X][SHIRAI01] Moves into the building second, taking cover and engaging any remaining alien targets. If no aliens remain, takes an advanced position northward in cover to prepare to complete the building sweep.

Slow and steady is a good bet since we're dealing with unknown Alien Pod compositions (apart from what Aliens we can generally epect) and no idea where they're coming from exactly.

We can switch to a more aggressive stance if needed but for now, caution is warranted.
 
Akritedes said:
Uh...I don't think we have line of sight to the sounds of movement from the door, so trying to Telefrag from the door may not work. If you still want to try that, I recommend having a contingency or back-up orders for when it doesn't work because she can't see a target.
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We DO have the grenades to bomb something on suspicion I think? The grenade blast should be about as big as the room.
 
veekie said:
We DO have the grenades to bomb something on suspicion I think? The grenade blast should be about as big as the room.
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We also don't know the lay-out of the building. What if the door we're opening is a lobby door, it's nothing but a small room with another door?

All I'm saying is that you want some redundancy in your orders, because we literally have no idea what the inside of the building looks like. It could be a warehouse full of crates. It could be the bottom floor of a dormitory building, and thus mostly lounge areas and a few small maintenance rooms and offices. It could be the athletics adjunct, and the door we're opening the main entrance to the dormitory swimming pool for all we know.

The only thing we do know for sure is that it's pretty much guaranteed not to be empty. There's something there besides the empty space we can see right now.
 
veekie said:
[X] Plan Blink Bomb Blast
-[X][SHIRAI02] First. Open the door a very tiny crack to get visuals while keeping cover. Teleport a pulled grenade to detonate in the midst of any sighted enemies. If no enemies can be sighted or guessed at, open the door wider and move into the building, taking advantage of any cover.
-[X][MISAKA10033] Holds position and remains on overwatch.
-[X][MISAKA10035] Opens the door and moves into the building. Takes cover on the interior corner and engages any targets SHIRAI02 does not eliminate with Arc Thrower(if only one) or Spark(if multiple). If no targets remain, assume overwatch to the north.
-[X][SHIRAI01] Moves into the building second, taking cover and engaging any remaining alien targets. If no aliens remain, takes an advanced position northward in cover to prepare to complete the building sweep.
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Amended
 
Ahahaha! Yes, come to the plan that talks about shocking and has no actual tasing whatsoever! My evil genius is without bounds! Bwahahahaha.
 
To be fair, I wouldn't be against a contingency saying that if one of the remaining opponent inside is a drone, to use Shock instead of the rifle. ;)
 
Macros said:
To be fair, I wouldn't be against a contingency saying that if one of the remaining opponent inside is a drone, to use Shock instead of the rifle. ;)
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I generally assume that the units are smart enough to use special attacks on enemies that are specially weak against them, but even if that's not the case an AR does enough damage on average to kill a Drone in one shot anyways, only a minimum damage result leaves the Drone intact and if it's already taken grenade damage it's guaranteed overkill.

I prefer to avoid trying to micro-manage things where possible, it has caused problems in the past.
 
It has worse accuracy though, but assuming the unit will choose to attack with the best option is a fair point.
 
[X] Plan Blink Bomb Blast


I've got a bad feeling about that electric noise crap on the other side of the map. If its Cyberdisks or Seekers, we're in hot water.

Also, how much LW are we going with here?
 
7734 said:
I've got a bad feeling about that electric noise crap on the other side of the map. If its Cyberdisks or Seekers, we're in hot water.
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If our intel is correct (but then again, is it ever? We'll find out), can't be those, all the enemies should be known units. The most likely possibility is that this is one of the two camera jammers we were told they brought.
 
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