The Exquisite Corps: XCOM: Enemy Within - Part 09

That was a tough one, Dan did ok. Mutons are way overpowered.

Yeah, the Slingshot rewards are so significant that they slingshot you down the progression tree. They give you access to advanced interceptors, explosive weapons, and craft weapons much earlier than in the vanilla progression, and you also get a ton of things you can sell for money.

With these rewards, even with the depleted barracks, the main barrier to success would be the time to build various necessities, as outlined in other comments.

@blacklagoon: Oh, hah, I totally missed that part.

@chaser324: Yup, that's definitely the long-game behind my request.

I called out a specific case in my original comment where he suppressed an Alien with Austin, then had Suda throw a grenade on it.

It wasn't a high-stress turn, but that's the sort of bad habits which resulted in this mission outcome.

Still not a man I would follow into battle.

Glad he toned down the BS though. While the mission really didn't go well, at least it wasn't made worse by heel schtick. Although, firing a rocket to hit precisely nothing is definitely a Dan Ryckert-style move.

Squadsight is tough to use efficiently since you need to balance advancing for better lines vs. taking the high-damage shots; this map in particular has a bunch of annoying obstacles. Still, Abomination's capabilities were leveraged fairly well here.

A shame about Austin. He barely had time to shine. Mary's record, on the other hand, was pretty stellar. I hope we can see MEC versions of them in the future.

They need to recruit more foddersoldiers, like yesterday. Let's hope the aliens don't wreak too much havoc in the meantime.

Poor Greg Mueller. Not only did he die, but he had spend his short life been called by the wrong name...

That last section was rough.

Going into May with 8 satellite covered nations is doable in Normal, an even more skilled player might be able to push it to 12, I never really thought about the route to get a 2x2 grid going along with satellites by the end of Apr. seriously, I usually only managed 8. By the end of May however 15 satellites are possible, effectively halting abduction missions, the roll over of engineers with workshops should allow two uplinks to be build in that month, satellite Nexus might be possible also, but I think that's a waste. They walked in with 2 are looking at 5 by the end of this month, essentially month one progress of a focused game.

The raw money issue was a problem since missing satellite by Apr. 10 a few episodes ago. Panic is a coin toss, no one is in the red and it is already the middle of the month, but a few of them are one step away.

With Exalt looming (or they might get lucky and it gets push to June) stockpiling money is a bad idea, buying and selling should be done in tandem to reduce the amount they could steal. Carapace armor seem to be the immediate buy, weapons are all over the place since soldiers are coming and going, sell and buy them as mission pops up. They need to double up on interceptors in each continent to be on the safe side, at the very least they need to be able to contest each ufo even if they can't shoot it down. The lacking of experienced soldiers is an on going issue, Assault especially, this is beyond the lightning reflex stage and in need of Rapid fire to really lay down the damage. Light Plasma is a hard research, capturing a muton would help, the +10 aim will help rookies which they should also stock up on.

Capturing an Outsider is for the most part a non-issue, they should not do alien base assault, they don't have the experienced troop for the follow up defend mission, and the follow up portent council missions. multiple Cyberdiscs will likely show up. It is ok as an option and one less light plasma to buy, but shouldn't really sweat over it. With carapace armor they should learn to love fighting outsider as minimal experience boost.

Research is where it is since scientists are rarely a priority to begin with so there's a limit to how far behind one can really get, and normally no one really has time/money for labs. They are however missing out on the monthly scientists from council report. Finish all the laser research if they want. Floater autopsy is the most useful autopsy right now and it is on the way, have they done sectoid autopsy yet? The rest are probably worth more as corpses sold than projects that they can't do except for chryssalids. Flight computer and power source are tough call, they worth decent money, and the ultimate goal of them is Flight computer + power source > Firestorm (long research time, might not be able to build, and high fragment cost), and power source > elerium > titan armor (long research time). Light Plasma might be better as the next step.

Gangplank is a tough mission early on as you have that guaranteed cyberdisk spawn. Dan kind of got screwed with the dice rolls here but he probably would have made it through unscathed if he simply slowed down his advancement across the map. Note to @vinny, in most cases, those enemies that drop right on top of you are triggered by your advancement on the map. Therefore, if you simply stop moving, they will stop spawning. So unless you have a turn countdown, slowing down is often best strategy. On this particular map (and others later on), disabling the conduits is also a triggering machinism. There were a few times where Dan was getting pounded and he still went ahead and disabled additional conduits. Dan obviously couldn't have known this without a lot of experience, but disabling the conduits was the absolute worst thing he could have done in those situatiosn because it just guaranteed that more enemies would spawn on the next turn.

@soimadeanaccount: Dan failed Portent so the follow-up missions are gone forever

I love this series so much. I was just standing still on the street today watching the Flying Disk part of this episode cause it was gripping. Poor Mary.

Dan's biggest downfall is just impatience. He always wants to rush to get turns finished, kill aliens, move forward. All of the bad play comes from moments of impatience - ending people's turns for no reason, using holo-targeting last, moving furthest forward with your last soldier's turn.

Actually that last one is something Vinny seems to specifically coach into everyone. You shouldn't uncover new areas of the map with no turns left. Moving back guys up first just means you always end up without anybody left to fire on the aliens you just found, especially as everyone seems to end their turns for no reason before moving on to the next guy. Just... have them sit there! Don't make them overwatch until everyone has stopped moving about.

Also it's killing me seeing them never click on Augment Soldiers.

@comradesolar: Yeah, they're running out of the more interesting Council missions since Dan failed them out of the Progeny series of missions. I think their next Council mission is rigged or highly biased to be Site Recon, but then that's it, back to the vanilla VIP retrieval/bomb defusal from the base game. At least those missions are pretty easy since Thin Men are easy to one-hit kill with the equipment the Exquisite Corps has access to.

I binged this series in the last week or so at work, I miss XCOM so it's been great.

My only hope is that they get some real weapons on all soldiers (laser across the board at minimum, but get some god damn plasma rifles from capturing thin men) and upgrade the interceptors.

Some bad luck, some really bad decisions, and some ignorance of the basic game mechanics. But I still enjoyed the episode.

Dan was really trying this time, and not using the rest of the squad as meat shields to protect the one he decided represents him. I appreciate that a lot.

@comradesolar:

Ah yes, forgot about that. Oh well, by the time they should get around to that stage of the game, the soldiers reward would have been minor hopefully. I think only the support and sniper are worth it. The assault is ok, Annette herself is rather poor.

Also gave the 2x2 satellite end of April uplink a try. It is possible in theory, I actually missed it by 3 in game minutes! Globe doesn't stop on the dot! Will likely need to save scum mission reward and timing to get enough engineers, so not reliable at all.

Hire rookies!!!

That was a really impressive display of rushed, sloppy play combined with an overabundance of unwarranted confidence.

- The Dan Ryckert Story

I hope I'm not the only one just watching the letter section of the videos and moving on. :)

It wasn't entirely Dan's fault, but at the same time it was kind of Dan's fault. Yes he got very unlucky with lots of misses against the Cyberdisc but he should have really pulled Mary back rather than leaving her in direct view of the Cyberdisc. But losing Austin and Mary in the same mission at this stage I think may prove fatal for XCOM.

@fedallah: Ah, exactly the comment I was looking for. Thank you for easing the tension for people who just started watching the series from the start and coincidentally turned out to be big babies about episodes 3 and 6 as well. Knowing this is when Dan tones his heelness down makes me so much more excited to watch this whole thing.

I know XCOM is known for having a huge speed bump in the early game and things toning down in the mid/late game (possibly meaning some people might complain about it being "too easy" in a few more missions), but high difficulty-fueled tension isn't why I love this series; besides, the true Enemy Within of Asshole Dan was what seemed to be truly threatening this series' lifeline. Glad that villain got taken care of.

Edit: Oh, and sorry for the months old resurrection.

This was Dan's turning point. His first time at the controls was terrible. Got the team killed failed the mission, just to save his soldier.

My hatred of watching Dan Ryckert play this game is palpable. He only plays this because it's his job and doesn't seem to like or care about what's happening. Oh well. Skipping every third episode as suggested. :)

@convox:100% Oh man! Mary was dead 100% in the poison so either get her out by killing the overwatched alien OR leave her for dead and to distract the disc.... so many bad choices.