Who Plans These Base Defense Missions Anyway?!?

[teukros]

What kind of a rocket scientist is in charge of planning for base defense anyway, grrrr come here mister base defense commander, take this stun rod, oh and here have a couple of grenades - they're primed so be careful, don't drop them!

 

In my game yesterday, my Hyperwave Communications Department at Dragon Base, Tianjin, decoded the communications from an Ethereal battleship which was on a "retaliation" mission, and headed straight for Tianjin! With the advantage of forewarning I knew better than to leave any electroflares etc in my base or in my Skymaster shuttle so I took everything I didn't want to use in the upcoming fight and shipped it all out to my under-construction base in Ysyk Kol, Kyrgyzstan. Heavy Cannon, Laser and Plasma Rifles, spare Laser Pistols, grenades, smoke grenades, spare ammo - it all went. Pretty much the only items I kept were Heavy Plasma Guns, two or three Heavy Lasers, two Rocket Launchers, a few Medikits, a couple of Motion Detectors, and maybe a few Proximity Grenades. I made sure that I had fewer than 80 items, so this is more of an annoyance than a grievance, still...

 

There was one Mind Probe in the base and I considered shipping that out too, but back in my base in Mount Pilatus, my scientists had not yet been able to figure out Mind Probes (the research was in progress). Since my troops were ineligible to use it and I was not allowed to load it on the Skymaster, I knew that I would not have to worry about it being included and counting against my 80 item limit! But of course when the equipping screen popped up, there it was at the bottom of the screen....

 

 

(With all of those great corners and doors to hide behind in the Living Quarters, I layered my troops - two or three per Living Quarters bloc, with the rest out of sight and out of danger. One guy was MC'ed early and kept running around in the main corridor, I hid from him until he panicked and dropped his Heavy Plasma and then I didn't give him a second thought. One other guy with a Heavy Plasma, and one guy with a Rocket Launcher, distinguished themselves with their hit and run attacks and killed all Ethereals and Sectopods! (edit: they got some help from four rocket HWPs) Late in the battle, Rocket Man was running around the outside perimeter of the Large Radar Array when he ran around the corner and found himself staring up at a sectopod... he had already used his three Heavy Rockets and he only had an Incendiary Rocket left!!! He fired it point blank at the sectopod and then

 

but he made it back behind cover and three turns later, the still burning (!) sectopod walked into the main corridor and got taken down by a single Heavy Plasma bolt)

 

 

Edit: Then there was the time I started a base defense mission with about 15 Heavy Plasma guns and not as much as one single Heavy Plasma magazine...

Edited January 8, 2005 by teukros

[Snakeman]

Heh, I had one recently where I had too many tanks at the base, so I had no soldiers to use

 

I think I had something like 8-10 tanks, a mixture of laser, plasma and rocket. But thankfully I had choke points set up or I'da had trouble if they went skulking in the upper levels.

[Sergio]

Yeah I struck that with having 7 plasma tanks to defend my base against Sectoids.

I little disconcerting but fair under the circumstances. I lost only one tank/

[Cpt. JAG]

 

I sometimes have my engineer build laser tanks so that i can sell them and make money. But my base was attacked (never saw it coming) and i had like 15 laser tanks which replaced all my soldiers . Thank god it was just floaters.

[[Blehm 98]]

laser tanks can do damage to sectopods you know.... in fact, laser tanks can kill most enemies except for mutons

[Sergio]

Yeah but having only tanks to defend your base is kinda weird. not gonna get caught out like that again. Soldiers are more versatile. And, it would be a bummer to be attacked by a race you couldn't kill with those weapons like the muton situation. At least with soldiers there are options like killing one then stealing his weapon etc.

[[NKF]]

Lasers work okay with Mutons, actually, as Superhuman soldier Mutons only have 20 armour (all-round). So even if they do resist lasers, the armour's not going to cut too much of it off. I've killed them with laser pistols, in any case, so there shouldn't be too much trouble with the heavy laser on the tank, which is the strongest laser in the game.

 

It's just that there are a lot less Sectopods than Mutons, so it seems like the Mutons are a lot tougher. From observation, I find they resist AP bullets more than anything (but they will fall to 3 - 4 hits from Autocannon HE shells, which is quite nice).

 

In case you anticipate coming across a similar situation in the future, toss a few fusion ball HWPs into the mix but keep the ammo at 0. You are given a free load of ammo at the start of a base defence mission anyway if you don't have enough ammo to arm your tanks, so you might as well use them up willy nilly. Nothing like softening up the alien forces by dropping a few fusion balls into the hangars on turn one. You can do the same with rocket HWPs, although they're not too good against the robotic terrorists and Chryssalids. If you feel that's cheating, well, look at it this way: by saving the base, you earn the right to keep the left-overs.

 

- NKF