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That one mission that went horribly wrong...


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We all have that one mission that went horribly wrong. Lets share them to show our insanity.

For me this mission was a landing ship mission and I sent my best men kitted out with lasers and grenades. The mission starts and I send out the guys in a ring around the dropship. All hell promptly breaks loose after. First 2 androns appear out of nowhere and soak up all the reaction fire. I think ok I can handle these two. Then I lose two guys that were still in the chinook to that damnable explosive weapon another one hiding in a building had. Then I see I shit you not 6 more androns and 2 harridans come out to play then my turn starts. I thought about fleeing. Then I in my infinite wisdom decided against it. I ended up firing a scatter laser into a bundle of them and then went shit because I remembered they can't be suppressed. Then I sent both shotgunners forward to melt face. They both collectively got one andron. I ended up focusing all my riflemen on the harridans in the distance. I don't remember what make the harridans special so I took both of them out after reaction fire takes another one of my guys. (i have 5 guys left btw) Then I pass the turn and an andron calmly walks up to my troop with the scatter laser hits him 3 himes 80 damages each killing him and the tile underneath him.... 4 guys left and one only has a riot shield and a stun baton. Luckily 3 of them clumped together and my alienum grenades took care of two of them. The last one broke the shield the shield troop had. During the alien turn the one in front of the shield guy move triggering reaction fire and dies. So with my 3 remaining guys I decide not to retreat because how many more androns would be left!!! I surround the building containing the andron with the explosive thing and sent my guy witht eh stun baton in to soak up damage. The andron blew himself up and left my dude with 20 hp. (turns out wolf armour was a great investment) So I take a turn to heal up everyone and then send the two with guns into the landing ship. Looks empty good sign. Next turn 2 androns come down and a harridan. I realize my soldier with the stun baton can pick up a weapon from the dead. I send him with a scatter laser towards the ship. Meanwhile the two in the ship already are having a firefight with the 3 aliens in there killing one andron and suppressing the harridan. Next turn the andron walks up to the closet guy kills him and walks close to the teleporter. Scatter laser guy takes out the harridan using the last of his ammo and the riflemen kill the andron. Then I took the next turn to heal them up each had little hp then. Get to the second floor get to the doors and wait till next turn. Send both guys in. After seeing the one final andron the rifleman opens fire and reaction fire kills him. The hero with the baton had picked up a plasma rifle and ended the mission after killing the andron. The rifleman survived but spent the next month in the hospital. The hero with the baton was scarred for life and the commander lost all his captains.

What did I learn form this mission you ask.

1. Androns are douches :l

2. Retreating is sometimes the best option.

So anyone else got any funny stories?

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I had a Terror mission in month 2 (might have been very beginning of three). 8 man team, 1 12-gauge Shotgun, 1 M-60 LMG, 1 Sniper, 1 Las Pistol w/ Shield, 4 Riflemen with M-16's. Mind you the laser pistol is the only laser weapon I've got, and I don't have any jackal or wolf armor (I was trying something new and spent all my money on bases and interceptors to get as much coverage as possible early in the game, that was a miscalculation on my part). 3rd turn out of the Chinook, my guys spread in my choice sweep and clear formation split into pairs and trios, find freakin' Androns (notice a theme here?) I used to find it amusing with the local troops would have the M-16 rounds bounce off of the Androns and then my guys sweep in with their higher tech weapons and wreck shop. I managed to kill one with grenades (took three frags to kill the damn thing), before my guys just got shredded. At that point, retreat was no longer an option: too many hostiles, too much ground to cover, and all shooting at them did was piss them off.

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About five months in to my Xenonaut campaign my field personnel encountered two decimations in succession - one during a medium crash site recovery and the other during a medium UFO landing.

At this point I had two operational bases with two teams, each with a core group of 4-6 soldiers that had been fighting together since the beginning. Each team had a Captain, the primary team at the Canadian base being led by an 18+ kill assault specialist equipped with wolf armour and a shotgun by the name of Cpt. Michael Blom. The secondary team at the European base was led by Cpt. Jeff Doakes, a rifleman equipped with wolf armour and a laser rifle. Cpt. Doakes was considerably less effective than Blom, with only 3 kills over 8+ missions and half the endurance. However, his promotion to Captain following a 2-kill mission and his promising bravery earned the trust of his comrades.

The medium UFO crash landing was the first in this succession of morale-draining missions. The crash site being located in Eastern Europe, Cpt. Doakes was sent with a team of 4 riflemen, 1 low-rank assaulter armed with a shotgun, and a Hunter equipped with a machine gun turret. Landing at night, the mission began with the deployment of the Hunter, headlights cutting through the darkness. Flares were tossed by higher ranking soldiers - including Cpt. Doakes - and the 3 Privates and single Colonel rushed in tandem in opposite directions. A Lieutenant followed and the group of 5 split into 2 groups, one team of 3 taking a defensive position behind a hedgerow and the other group - consisting of the assault Pvt. and the Col. - moving to room-clear a farmhouse.

The Hunter roamed the rural environment, an armoured unmanned scout, guided by Cpt. Doakes in search of surviving hostiles. 5 minutes into the mission, turning the hedgerow with few time units remaining, the Hunter illuminated a group of 3 Sebillians, hunkered directly opposite the 3-man team that had taken up a defensive position, awaiting the Hunter's resolution of the battlefield. The Hunter was instructed to turn and flee immediately but could not make it outside of the Sebillians' field of view. The private nearest the alien trio moved into position and fired a snapshot, striking the foremost Sebillian but not causing death. Plasmic reaction fire struck the unarmoured Private in the chest, melting his rib cage and lungs. A gurgling scream reverberated in the cold fall air.

The Hunter took steady fire from the Sebillians in subsequent turns until the unthinkable happened: it was destroyed. This was the team's first experience with the destruction of a Hunter, an asset Cpt. Doakes had grown reliant upon for scouting, suppression, and kills. Left with 4 troops at his disposal, with but one Sebellian killed, Cpt. Doakes decided to press onwards rather than retreat. Emerging from the ramp of the Chinook, Cpt. Doakes engaged the Sebillians at distance with his laser rifle. The creatures had maneuvered around the hedgerow and were facing the remaining Privates head-on. The Captain's shots were off target, and the Privates quickly fell to fire originating from an as yet unexplored area of the map.

Scrambling his remaining troops back from the uneventful farmhouse clearance, Cpt. Doakes fired frantically at the remaining Sebillian, all the while attempting to find cover from the unidentified combatant in the distance. Struck by well-placed fire from the unidentified foe, Cpt. Doakes took a knee behind a haystack, attempting to regain composure and accurate fire on the Sebillian. However, the Sebillian struck first, the plasma cutting through Doakes' wolf armour and leaving him in a tangled lifeless heap.

At this poiint, the shotgun-wielding assaulter lost his mind, firing aimless shots in frustration and neurosis. The remaining solider - a Colonel armed with a rifle - maneuvered around the farmhouse to take up position on the unidentified alien which had directly and indirectly contributed to the annihilation of fire team 1 and Cpt. Doakes. Tossing a flare into the night, a slender metallic figure, with antennae and multiple red eyes emerged: a Harridan. This was a first encounter. The Harridan turned its attention on the Colonel after receiving fire. The Col. - frozen in fear by the metallic insectoid that stood before him - was killed with pinpoint fire. The berserking assaulter was put out of his misery by the remaining Sebillian. An entire team wiped out.

The story of Cpt. Blom, who was transferred to the Euro base following the death of Cpt. Doakes will follow in the next few days.

Morals of the story:

-Be careful with your Hunters - losing one is a serious compromise

-If you sense that a high-ranking officer doesn't have what it takes to lead without other high-ranking officers present, trust your instincts

-Xenonauts a well-tuned, aesthetically impressive spiritual successor to the best video game that was ever made

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I think i have mentioned my traumatic experience somewhere before but i will repeat here since i learnt a lot from it.

I fought off the initial assult of about 6 Sebillians and 2 Reapers in the industrial complex area and I thought i was safe.

So i move my men towards the UFO, using up all their time units. Then out of nowhere, i heard the hatching noises of reapers and 2 of those monsters emerged from the shadows, taking 3 men with them.

Wanting to saved the zombified men, i decided to gas the reapers but non of them goes down. By the next turn, 3 more men went down and i decided to abort mission without running my guys back to the Shrike. The entire team consisting of 2 colonels and quite a few high leveled guys is lost.

Lesson learnt:

- If you see Sebilians, there is bound to be reapers.

- Always have a guy in sentinel on the look out for reapers.

- Fear the shadows. Always check the shadows if there are reapers in the mission.

- When you think you are safe, you are not.

- Tank is reaper's nemesis

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Apart from some very stupid beginner mistakes, such as not understanding what it really means when grenades have a 0% to hit and gassing my own team, the only total failure I've had so far was a when the aliens assaulted my base for the first time.

I was having problems with money and I had researched Jackal armor and laser weapons but didn't simply have the money to make them. I had 2 jackals and 1 laser pistol. A UFO wave hits me. I chase some and notice that they are of a new type. Corvettes with escorts. Well, that's interesting I thought to myself. I proceed to make the mistake of "I want to see what they are in air combat" instead of just autoresolving everything. I am really, really bad the air combat subgame so I get my interceptors wiped out. So I lose about 75% of my local air forces and rest of them are getting back to shape.

The corvette proceeds to attack my base. I'm wondering if they are Sebilians or Caesans. I can hear the ever-delightfull rapid fire of a Drone as the invaders start to wreck the base. Since I had not seen sebs with Drones I assume they are Ceasans. I couldn't be more wrong. My worry over having to fight the Drones with their billion supressing shots turns into utter terror as the first ever Androns I have seen bust through the door. I didn't really even have the means to fight against them and lost.

After that I decide to wuss out, dial the difficulty down and try to learn how to manage my funds better.

This wasn't a ground combat mission but in my ongoing game I had a grimly hilarious geoscape failure. Aliens proceed to terror bomb Nuuk in Greenland out of all places, perhaps because they tried their luck with Brasilia and got promtly shot down. I can take down a bomber and it's escort comfortably. So I send out a patrol. Which runs out of fuel like single pixel before it can reach Nuuk. I can only imagine the PR meltdown that must have followed the event. "Sorry, we ran out of gas."

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While I did succeed in the end, it was when I assaulted the first base of my current playthrough...in September...only to find that it was Androns...

...let's just say my entire team spent an inordinate amount of time in the first room talking over things while Drones and Androns sprayed plasma through the doorways...only managed to succeed through copious amounts of C4 and machinegun spray.

...still lost my best marksman and spent the better part of a month recovering from it though...

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Assaulted my first base. Androns. ;.;

spent a few turns trapped in second room. Damned drones kept suppressing my entire squad. Sortof funny. But I lost good people and a few privates but they were expendable....

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