Disaster strikes when I let the turn roll over. Two enemies pop through the door here, and both are melee with easy targets.
Slut goes down first, but is alive, at least for now.
Belle isn't so lucky, and gets annihilated by the fencer's lightsaber. The other enemy runs forward and attacks Echidna too, but doesn't manage to injure her.
At the same time, mercs arrive. It's not so bad now though, we've made some space so they have few TUs left by the time they reach us.
The new enemy that took Slut down. Monoclaws aren't nearly as deadly as the photon swords, but they'll still kill a target real fast.
We easily take out both new enemies and Slut gets healed enough to survive another round. She'll recover eventually thanks to the Bio Suit. This next room though... two turrets? Giant ones? We can't handle this shit. They're facing away, so we could theoretically sneak past them, but all it would take for us to get wiped out is an enemy coming through the doors and spotting us. Or hell, a SG with sense spotting us from below.
Zug tries out the new blaster bomb toy. It's... really bad. So inaccurate it didn't manage to kill a sectopod even after 6 shots being fired at once. There's a bigger problem though- I didn't pay attention to the TU cost, and Zug is now stranded in front of the ship cannons. Not good.
Lenneth loots this thing off one of the nubirans we killed. The original plan was for her to grab someone else's elite plasma if she needed ranged options, but she spawned without many allies. This'll do in a pinch, hopefully.
Orcinator gets back on her feet. Health is totally fucked but armour is still pretty strong. If I could pass the vampire sword down to heal we'd be back in action for sure.
Jaedar continues to torch enemies below. This thing has dealt a ton of damage so far.
Turn 8 slides by, no reinforcements.
Zug being stranded has one benefit- we get to spy on the enemy a bit. We see a fencer leave the ship here, and then a merc commander enter it. Not terribly helpful; we've still no idea how many are likely inside. At least we know there's an airlock.
Poking into here to avoid being ambushed we find another room with operators in it. And we weird arrow on the floor. The things scattered around are newspaper bundles, so I guess this is where they make them or something?
Checking for the commander's body to grab his weapon reveals a bit of loot I missed in the cave above. Rather than on the conspicuous orange broken egg looking things, it's in the corner hidden by the wall.
It's 4 slices of cake and a golden box. The cake is nice, but not that nice since we've got endless freshness more or less. And the golden box... wtf am I supposed to do with that?
Combination of the nubiran laser gatling and our elite plasma takes out a tank down here. Progress feels real slow but we are killing noteworthy enemies faster than they're spawning, it seems.
Speaking of which, the last of the scorcher's first clip is done, and takes out another tank. MVP goes to Jaedar I think. I don't know how we'd get through to the ship with all those tanks and sectopods around.
Turn nine rolls by without enemy sightings and on our turn we push into this room instead of down the elevator, and find the sectopod that we attacked earlier. And a merc engineer with a multi blaster. Nasty.
I ponder sending Orcinator on a suicide charge to scout the ship, but we won't even reach it
Finding weapons on enemies is proving very helpful. It's really patching up the holes left by the ones we've lost along the way, and mismanaged ammo distribution.
Since the turrets ahead seem like a death trap that leads to another death trap, I opt to dig out a hole in the wall and use it as a sniper nest. If we can clear this side, we can even bring Turkish Ronin down by jump through the hole.
Checking the room to confirm no more infantry in here, and it seems clear.
Another merc wave, and whatever else spawns elsewhere. From this point onward, we only get reinforcements every 5 turns though. Unless we get some special brutal wave later on, we can handle that indefinitely.
Another nubiran shows up but gets taken out.
The merc wave is much more successful this time, largely because Ronin was out of ammo and position.
Our best catgirl nearly got taken out, but she managed to survive.
Chaos dagger's 20% lifesteal fixes her back up to full the same turn. So glad I had these.
I decide it's time to collect strange fellow's things, along with maybe getting him back on his feet as well. Haven't seen psychic attacks in a while, perhaps we killed the ones able to do them?
The sectopod we've been dancing with finally goes down, thanks to it getting close to the door and Lightbane verifying it had no TUs left with the mind orb. Considering he basically hasn't left his spawn point, he's been very helpful.
And now that we get a better look at the room... it's ANOTHER giant fucking turret. Christ, this side of the map is such a hellhole. I get the other route having them at least, it's where the tanks spawn. But here? This squad started with only 4 people!
What is this? Delicious cake? Alien lootbox? Nope, just a random doodad that exploded for minor damage when I slashed it. The map design here baffles me sometimes.
Man, it's going to take forever to re-equip all this shit. Better get started I suppose.
Or a muton gal could show up and finish the job.
In retrospect, I should have pulled the body up the hole while Orcinator was asleep, it's a cheesy way to get back up there with a unit that can't fly.
I finally notice this room over here, which we must have spotted many turns ago. That guy looks real fancy...
Yeah, that looks pretty important. I'm tempted to try and go get that remote, but I don't see a good way to do so. We could fly over, but the ship turrets would cut us to ribbons. And while there's a ground route, there's a sectopod over there and probably plenty of other unseen threats.
We got the research on this thing before, but it's unhelpfully vague on what it actually does. The detailed analysis isn't any better. Even if we do get the damned thing, it probably has one button that instakills a sectopod, and another that gives it +500 shields and TUs. Hopefully it's not some gimmick required to kill the boss.
We explore the last side rooms in this long hallway. Maria finds this weird one with some holo-globe thing but nothing substrantial. The catgirls find a single operator and 4 closets with various loot, including a damaged Syn with a photon sword we snatch.
At this point we're starting to get a lot of uneventful turns and the enemies seem very thinned out. We might be able to grind this out in a war of attrition.
Wait a second... giant elevator? Is this...
BWAHAHAHA! We're bustin' out girls!
Lacking any more tanks to fire on (there's one sectopod left I know about, but it's at the far side of the ship) we start trying to take out some turrets. Probably pointless, but I've got nothing better to spend this ammo on, I don't trust it in close quarters.
Bastards tried to sneak up on us while we tunnel, but I saw it coming.
Two more turns go by. With 3 of the 4 small teams connected, things are looking way up.
Jaedar draws fire from a cannon and it fails to punch through his shield. Not sure why it managed to fire back now but not before. Direct hit to spot him, perhaps?
All this digging gave me the idea to check... and the cave room is on the same level as the long hallways. We can connect to the cave group too, and use their sniper nest to attack the ship and rush onboard from there! If the map is a bag of dicks, we'll make our own fucking map!
In another stroke of luck, we spot a muton in the main room and manage to possess it.
He's right alongside the hull, so the turrets shouldn't spot him...
Sure enough, we get through the doors... and instantly drop dead. Another type of floor trap. The blue ones seems to be slicing. No idea what these are, but that room's definitely a no-go. Perhaps this is what the remote control is for? I'm not sure the engine could even do something like that, but maybe it's part of the original mission? Either way, we'll be trying other ways to get in first for sure. There's another set of doors just to the left, some holes in the roof by some engine looking things, and we might even be able to cut our way through with the photon swords.
A fencer scared the shit out of me, popping out of the news room I'd thought was cleared. No idea how we missed him, but he didn't save enough TUs to attack, so he died a stupid death.
Gandalf is finally fully recovered from when I accidentally walked her onto the slicer floor tiles... I mean from battle with the disgusting xenos. Yes. That's definitely what almost killed her.
Another brain wave hits me- instead of cutting directly into the main room, we can cut over to the sniper boxes on this side, which are 2 tiles tall. We can drop down and use the elevators and paths to connect up with the other squads! We'll have the whole team in one spot, and be basically unstoppable. Not to mention finally getting to put Manatee to use for something besides merc reinforcement disposal.
Though she is REALLY good at that. To be honest, leaving her here with Ronin might be the play- Ronin's shields can tank their fire every time I'd wager, and Manatee can mop them up on our turn. They'll be the last to leave for sure.
Strange Fellow finally gets revived. 8 voodoo power? WTF man? No wonder you got mind controlled. Maybe the suit has a penalty...
While trying to dig to the side we find a strage wall in the way. Secret room? Enemy spawn zone?
Another merc commander with a multi blaster shows up, this time on this side. I figured there'd be one here too for symmetry's sake. He's doomed.
First ship turret is down. It took a LOT of attacks. The shields and regen rate are crazy high.
Thankfully, we'll have plenty more ammo and guns to put to the task soon enough! With 4 photon swords, the tunnel here is blazing ahead. The other squad has to pass around their single blade.
Cutting into the room reveals it to be a corner sniper nest... with nothing inside. No enemies, loot, and no natural way in or out. Very strange. And not every useful, since it's facing the ship turrets. It's also at this point I realize a problem with my plan- we can't bring the XEC down the infantry sized elevators to meet up in the cave. I could maybe bring the magic hammer over, bust through the floors and do it that way but... doesn't seem worth it, with 0 freshness left on Ronin and no way to restore it. I think I'm going to go with the XEC tanking mercs while Manatee cleans them up plan. Not glamourous, but if the main assault team takes a long time to handle the ship, I don't want dozens of mercs trickling towards it because we let them build up for 20 turns.
Catgirls make use of their flight powers to salvage some ammo from Orcinator, after spending most of theirs on the turret and other targets.
Turn 18, and things are moving fast now. Haven't seen new star gods or tanks in ages. I think it's just the mercs spawning in that one room.
Oh, and of course he got mind controlled again, every single turn pretty much. At least he's not a threat with nothing but a medipack in his hands.
We're through! After a few turns to organize and recover energy, we can start attacking the ship in earnest.
Jaedar died offscreen, sadly. And in a dumb way too- I just forgot he was standing at a window to scout the room for someone else, and he got destroyed by turrets on the enemy turn.
Gandalf is going to take over his post. This time I'll use the multi-blaster from a safe angle. Well, safe from turrets. Good chance we explode ourselves. But gandalf can probably recover from that.
...this thing sucks. It fired 8 rounds, maybe 3 hit the turret (a couple flew back towards us!) and it barely stripped the shields. Ugh. I wish we had nukes. Wait. Belle had 2 extra nukes. The equipment stash should be in the merc spawning room. I could grab a mortar... might be a good idea.
We snag another muton, this time a gal. Not in nearly as good a position though.
Rather than approach the ship, I opt to scout some side rooms to see if there's a pile of enemies waiting. Nope, empty. But the airlock between this and the ship room has 2 more giant turrets. Man, this route really was a total deathtrap.
Also, with this room revealed, I can see it connects to the room that exploded on turn 3. I guess the idea was that we have the two small teams meet up here, drop down, and go in from this side? We'd have gotten slaughtered!
Yeah yeah... just showing this screenshot because it shows the roof access to the ship. It's in front of the array of 4 turrets, so I consider it a last resort. Would take a lot of work to clear those. Maybe if I manage to nuke them twice in once round and chuck a blaster bomb or two at them for good measure.
Mercs manage to deplete Ronin's shields this time, but no wounds. Manatee will clean up easily.
I try a blaster salvo at the sectopod over here, and again it's a clusterfuck that lands shots all over the room. Really underwhelming weapon.
Project M.O.L.E. is proceeding well. It's slow going, as we need to pass around the sword and make side rooms for people to wait in while not digging, but we get a few tiles each round, and we're close to our goal.
Likewise, over here we're mostly recovered and reloaded now. I'm debating whether to go now or wait for the other team. It's going to be another 10 turns before they get here I think, at least. No nasty reinforcements so far, but that doesn't mean they won't happen on turn 25 or something. The nice round numbers scare me now.
For now we'll work on killing what turrets we can. We've got half a dozen elite plasma now and soldiers to use them and ammo to spare. We can take turrets down safely.
Before that I take some shots at the door hoping they're flimsy and we can see inside, but no dice.
Also I managed to destroy some of our cover in the process. Shit.
We even draw a shot back from this turret, but it does go down.
I try a blaster salvo at the door next, which also fails. It destroys some floor tiles though, which gives me an idea- maybe we can go through the purple room if we explode the floors? Worth a shot. Also, there's floors under this one, which concerns me greatly. Governor might be down there, or an ambush party of god knows what. Really wish we had Manatee over here to sense through walls/floors for us. At least I brought aye-phones to motion scan.
