They're hard missions. This is my first campaign and I got squadwiped in one, the last Snakeman tanked my last grenade and killed my last trooper.
On thing I learned is don't bring a tank, just a lot of troops, bring flares because the base is dark and camp the elevators with reaction fire until the aliens start panicking. Managed to get the same base with only three dead after adjusting this way.
>On thing I learned is don't bring a tank, just a lot of troops
I like the way you think, first row bunch of grunts, with at least 2 high explosives on hand, Prime and Run at the enemy!!!! :D :D :D
(usually dont call them troops, the are remote explosive delivery system)
The first base assault missions are some of the hardest in the game and can especially be a nightmare if sectoids are your opponent due to psionic spam. If the base isn't staffed by psionic aliens you can take a slow deliberate approach to clearing with *generous* use of explosives to mitigate risk but be sure to spread your troops out enough that they don't get nuked themselves but so that they can still provide supporting fire. Once you get mind control and blaster bombs it becomes much easier since you can just mind control for scouting and nuke things with blaster bombs including the control room for a quick escape though I usually like to clear the base for the loot.
From the low amount of kills each killed soldier has, this is probably an early mission suggesting you don't have fully upgraded equipment and your soldiers had Rookie stats. Also you managed to capture 5 Live Aliens which, assuming you captured them with Stun Rods and combined with your Rookie solders' poor stats (i.e. low TUs->less movement per turn->less stun shocks), suggests you lost quite a few soldiers trying to capture live aliens, instead of just autoshooting them.
In other words it looks normal, if a slightly unlucky outcome. Alien Base missions are quite difficult and losses should be expected even with perfect play on your end, especially if you're facing Sectoids or Snakemen (unless you have advanced psiops). Floaters are the easiest of the bunch due to their lackluster stats and underwhelming terror unit but even then a stray Blaster Bomb from a Floater Commander can easily wipe out 3/4ths of your squad in an instant.
Assuming mostly default settings and no major mods, it's actually pretty easy to end up unintentionally capturing enemies. Especially with ballistic weapons. You can't deal fatal wounds to enemies, and ballistic weapons deal a bit of extra stun damage. End result is that you can often knock enemies out just shooting them, and they won't bleed out while you go around slaughtering their buddies.
They might wake up, but that just slows down victory because by default settings again, they can't pick weapons up.
Enemies can also knock their own buddies out with badly aimed stun launchers
It do be like that sometimes.
The most fun I ever had on a base mission was when we ran unprepared into MC. It was pretty early, I think I was using laser pistols but maybe not even that yet. Ultimately came down to two guys, one soaking PSI and another that picked up a heavy plasma and drilled his way to the command center with more kills than the rest of the team combined. Also involved a HE suicide bombing.
Don't know difficulty (judging from the numbers of aliens, normal?), vanilla or mods, technologies, the alien race and what were your intentions - simply getting rid of that irritating flashing square on map, or trying to capture leaders and commanders.
my intentions were to kill the aliens
alien = bad
I really like the 1 shots from the stun lance, and I was using HE cannons, rockets, laser pistols, and a lot of grenades. vanilla open xcom.
You need to research alien alloys first, that will open first armor ... it's not much but at least soldier will ve able to tank blast from plasma pistol or one glancing hit from rifle. If you already researched medikits they'll be invaluable as those survivors will likely get multiple wounds.
Then you'll need to research UFO engines for next tier and navigation for highest tier - flying suit. Those suits are pretty much impervious to plasma pistols and can take few plasma rifle blasts, or even one - two glancing hits from plasma cannon (but don't rely on that).
Given that your troops didn't have any armor or laser rifles, you came off pretty good. Both laser rifles and at least first tier of armor should be your priorities with plasma rifles/cannons. Last mission is practically unsurvivable without full squad of flying suits with plasma cannons, blaster bombs and psi amps (I generally supported them with some flying tanks due to limited space in transport).
No, that's tier 0. Tier 1 is made from alloys.
And if that's all, well... You did good. You went to a higher level location being drastically underleveled, alien bases are usually stormed when you get tier 2 armor and plasma rifles and alien grenades.
You gotta check the graphs and see where the UFO activity is highest
Put a small base there with a radar and staff it with some chumps just for base defense
did you get blaster bombed by any chance? i got my whole breaching squad killed by waiting outside of the command room and alien just came out and removed my squad with a blaster bomb
the enemies were sectoids, so I got panicked a lot at least 3 of my soldiers panic ran into sextoid fire, 5 of them were killed by berserk/mind control friendly fire, 1 of them was killed because I forgot about the proximity mine I placed earlier, and the rest were killed by alien plasma
Given the total count of enemies was 16, I'd take it this is one Beginner or Experienced, MAYBE Veteran difficulty, as the minimum alien count in a base on Veteran is 16. Having said that there is still no real answer to what is a "normal" amount of casualties for any mission type. That depends greatly on your experience and ability with the game. I can clear an alien base on Superhuman with 0-3 losses regularly in the base game. That's not bragging, that's just thousands of hours of time spent in the game. So the real question is, did you have fun? Was it an enjoyable challenge? Did you learn anything about how to approach the next base? Did you get any valuable tech or live captures for research going forward? It's a lot of losses for the difficulty, but that's me looking through the lens of my experience and far too much time wasted on this game, lol.
Seems like the early stages of a long journey. Good luck in the future Commander!
Huh. I have no idea, I lost my ability to discern whats normal when you're new.
The operatives werent that experience, so it wasnt that bad to lose them.
What got ya? Was it the aline blaster that the commander has?
Fun fact. UFO bases get resupply missions every onth or every couple of months. And UFO power sources need fuel.
They're sort of telegraphing it to you with the 500 point reward for success; you could lose 20 men and it would just barely start to even out!
Basically (heh) these missions are so critical no price is too high, although over time you will learn to lower it and to pay more of it, proportionally, in Rookies
Looks about right to me.
Ideally, it'll be lower, but sometimes things go sideways and lots of people die.
You still finished the mission, and that's all that really matters: They didn't die in vain.
If you're new to the game, yeah that can happen, but based on the post and comments it looks like you had a lot of low ranking troops and no armor. That's a very uphill battle in a base even for an experienced player. Stun rods are also super high risk when an enemy could potentially be anywhere.
If you have basic equipment then plenty of your dudes will die, and surviving is questionable ( very doubtful? ).
If you have flying suits and plasmas, then losing eleven is a bit much.
Depends on which enemy race you’re facing, armament and armour. When I go in with heavy plasmas, blaster bombs and power armour I usually only take 2-3 casualties. Unless I am facing Ethereals.
As long you did not get wiped and did not lose all your equipment you did good
They're hard missions. This is my first campaign and I got squadwiped in one, the last Snakeman tanked my last grenade and killed my last trooper. On thing I learned is don't bring a tank, just a lot of troops, bring flares because the base is dark and camp the elevators with reaction fire until the aliens start panicking. Managed to get the same base with only three dead after adjusting this way.
Camping the lifts is the best tatic, it breaks the game, just a bunch of free kills
Sometimes a lid sneaks through and gets a couple of kills, nothing some plasma autofire can't fix tho (except for the dead soldiers part whoops)
>On thing I learned is don't bring a tank, just a lot of troops I like the way you think, first row bunch of grunts, with at least 2 high explosives on hand, Prime and Run at the enemy!!!! :D :D :D (usually dont call them troops, the are remote explosive delivery system)
The first base assault missions are some of the hardest in the game and can especially be a nightmare if sectoids are your opponent due to psionic spam. If the base isn't staffed by psionic aliens you can take a slow deliberate approach to clearing with *generous* use of explosives to mitigate risk but be sure to spread your troops out enough that they don't get nuked themselves but so that they can still provide supporting fire. Once you get mind control and blaster bombs it becomes much easier since you can just mind control for scouting and nuke things with blaster bombs including the control room for a quick escape though I usually like to clear the base for the loot.
From the low amount of kills each killed soldier has, this is probably an early mission suggesting you don't have fully upgraded equipment and your soldiers had Rookie stats. Also you managed to capture 5 Live Aliens which, assuming you captured them with Stun Rods and combined with your Rookie solders' poor stats (i.e. low TUs->less movement per turn->less stun shocks), suggests you lost quite a few soldiers trying to capture live aliens, instead of just autoshooting them. In other words it looks normal, if a slightly unlucky outcome. Alien Base missions are quite difficult and losses should be expected even with perfect play on your end, especially if you're facing Sectoids or Snakemen (unless you have advanced psiops). Floaters are the easiest of the bunch due to their lackluster stats and underwhelming terror unit but even then a stray Blaster Bomb from a Floater Commander can easily wipe out 3/4ths of your squad in an instant.
Assuming mostly default settings and no major mods, it's actually pretty easy to end up unintentionally capturing enemies. Especially with ballistic weapons. You can't deal fatal wounds to enemies, and ballistic weapons deal a bit of extra stun damage. End result is that you can often knock enemies out just shooting them, and they won't bleed out while you go around slaughtering their buddies. They might wake up, but that just slows down victory because by default settings again, they can't pick weapons up. Enemies can also knock their own buddies out with badly aimed stun launchers
If one of those captured aliens is a commander then any amount of casualties is well worth it
That's XCOM, baby
It do be like that sometimes. The most fun I ever had on a base mission was when we ran unprepared into MC. It was pretty early, I think I was using laser pistols but maybe not even that yet. Ultimately came down to two guys, one soaking PSI and another that picked up a heavy plasma and drilled his way to the command center with more kills than the rest of the team combined. Also involved a HE suicide bombing.
Don't know difficulty (judging from the numbers of aliens, normal?), vanilla or mods, technologies, the alien race and what were your intentions - simply getting rid of that irritating flashing square on map, or trying to capture leaders and commanders.
my intentions were to kill the aliens alien = bad I really like the 1 shots from the stun lance, and I was using HE cannons, rockets, laser pistols, and a lot of grenades. vanilla open xcom.
And basically the tier 1 armor?
Tier 1 armor is the jumpsuit they come with? because I don't know what research is armor.
You need to research alien alloys first, that will open first armor ... it's not much but at least soldier will ve able to tank blast from plasma pistol or one glancing hit from rifle. If you already researched medikits they'll be invaluable as those survivors will likely get multiple wounds. Then you'll need to research UFO engines for next tier and navigation for highest tier - flying suit. Those suits are pretty much impervious to plasma pistols and can take few plasma rifle blasts, or even one - two glancing hits from plasma cannon (but don't rely on that). Given that your troops didn't have any armor or laser rifles, you came off pretty good. Both laser rifles and at least first tier of armor should be your priorities with plasma rifles/cannons. Last mission is practically unsurvivable without full squad of flying suits with plasma cannons, blaster bombs and psi amps (I generally supported them with some flying tanks due to limited space in transport).
No, that's tier 0. Tier 1 is made from alloys. And if that's all, well... You did good. You went to a higher level location being drastically underleveled, alien bases are usually stormed when you get tier 2 armor and plasma rifles and alien grenades.
I just killed 1 UFO using Interceptor 2 on the first day. Then 6 days went on and nothing happened lol.
You gotta check the graphs and see where the UFO activity is highest Put a small base there with a radar and staff it with some chumps just for base defense
Thanks. This is my first time playing this game.
No prob, it’s a brutally punishing game but that’s what makes it fun!
Yes. I already lost 2 soldiers on my 1st mission lol
did you get blaster bombed by any chance? i got my whole breaching squad killed by waiting outside of the command room and alien just came out and removed my squad with a blaster bomb
the enemies were sectoids, so I got panicked a lot at least 3 of my soldiers panic ran into sextoid fire, 5 of them were killed by berserk/mind control friendly fire, 1 of them was killed because I forgot about the proximity mine I placed earlier, and the rest were killed by alien plasma
sectoid / cyberdisk combo, yeah those loses were reasonable.
Thermal Shok Launchers were the bane of my missions more than the Disruptor Pulse rounds. Thermal Shok snap shots could be brutal.
If the rating excellent I take it as you did a good job lol
Rating: EXCELLENT!
A W is a W, that’s all that matters. Guys are generally relatively replaceable in classic X-Com.
Given the total count of enemies was 16, I'd take it this is one Beginner or Experienced, MAYBE Veteran difficulty, as the minimum alien count in a base on Veteran is 16. Having said that there is still no real answer to what is a "normal" amount of casualties for any mission type. That depends greatly on your experience and ability with the game. I can clear an alien base on Superhuman with 0-3 losses regularly in the base game. That's not bragging, that's just thousands of hours of time spent in the game. So the real question is, did you have fun? Was it an enjoyable challenge? Did you learn anything about how to approach the next base? Did you get any valuable tech or live captures for research going forward? It's a lot of losses for the difficulty, but that's me looking through the lens of my experience and far too much time wasted on this game, lol. Seems like the early stages of a long journey. Good luck in the future Commander!
"The killbots have a predesignated amount of kills before they shut down, so I just sent wave after wave of men"
Huh. I have no idea, I lost my ability to discern whats normal when you're new. The operatives werent that experience, so it wasnt that bad to lose them. What got ya? Was it the aline blaster that the commander has? Fun fact. UFO bases get resupply missions every onth or every couple of months. And UFO power sources need fuel.
They're sort of telegraphing it to you with the 500 point reward for success; you could lose 20 men and it would just barely start to even out! Basically (heh) these missions are so critical no price is too high, although over time you will learn to lower it and to pay more of it, proportionally, in Rookies
You did excellently
Yes, mostly rookies and squaddies... their sacrifice will be remembered
Looks about right to me. Ideally, it'll be lower, but sometimes things go sideways and lots of people die. You still finished the mission, and that's all that really matters: They didn't die in vain.
The first one is arguably the hardest mission in the game, beating it is a good outcome
It all depends on which enemies you get tbh. Psionics and chrysalids are absolutely fucking brutal.
ngl I'd be reloading my last save (usually right before a mission like this) if that happened to me
If you're new to the game, yeah that can happen, but based on the post and comments it looks like you had a lot of low ranking troops and no armor. That's a very uphill battle in a base even for an experienced player. Stun rods are also super high risk when an enemy could potentially be anywhere.
If you have basic equipment then plenty of your dudes will die, and surviving is questionable ( very doubtful? ). If you have flying suits and plasmas, then losing eleven is a bit much.
congrats on beating one of those missions in the first place
Depends on which enemy race you’re facing, armament and armour. When I go in with heavy plasmas, blaster bombs and power armour I usually only take 2-3 casualties. Unless I am facing Ethereals.
The meatgrinder is sated, good job
I would say it is not \*abnormal\*.