Honestly, in my games, I have not once seriously needed for Engineers or scientists, and I never build labs, and workshops only for the refund bonus. Maybe it had to do with my base being in Asia, but my North American one didn't have a problem either.
You can have a base in Asia? My options were Europe and North America.
You can only pick Europe or North America to start if you do the tutorial. Otherwise you can also pick Asia, Africa, and South America, which have their own advantages.
Good to know.
Warning: No actual combustion. Probably. Now that I've said that, of course, I give it 50-50 odds that something important gets set on fire.
Three abductions. We really need a couple more Skyrangers. Nigeria, Australia, UK. Nigeria is Difficult and offers a Heavy, UK is Easy and offers four engineers, and Australia offers $200 and reduces Panic in a terrified area...but is Very Difficult. Well, frak me with a firecracker, we're going Down Under. We really can't take any higher Panic in Asia.
Operation Demon Gift
Cookie, Socks, Saturn, and White--AKA Emily King of Australia, the medic, Anastasaya Smirnova of where-do-you-think, the Assault soldier with the highest kill-count of anyone (closely followed by the late Papa Clean), the Support guy the Argentinians gave us, and our only Sniper ready for action--prepare for action. This could be the toughest mission yet. I really hope no one dies, but it wouldn't surprise me. Good luck, soldiers.
Three hulks--wait, they were called "mutons"--three mutons and a pair of floaters show up and surround Saturn. Remarkably, he survives a barrage from the mutons...barely. One of the floaters is headshotted by White, but remarkably little else is accomplished before two more of the aerially-enabled bastards showed up. Saturn polishes off one of the mutons, White explodes another floater, Socks explodes yet another, and Cookie accidentally advances to the wrong side of cover, losing half her turn and a bit more than half of her health. Thank any god there may be that the second muton shot missed, because she has the only medkit and Saturn is in critical condition. (Note to self: Buy more medikits.) More aliens are shot, White earns a promotion, a tactical miscalculation prevents proper use of Socks's gun and costs her the kill, and the firefight ends. One man down, three women looking around worried for what comes next.
As half the team advances, Cookie works on trying to figure out what button to press to revive Saturn, and what reviving actually does. Google helps. I'm pretty sure by this point that it A. requires an upgrade and B. is not required to bring the man back alive. White advances, spotting a trio of sectoids hiding behind the building everyone is on. I waste Run and Gun moving to a position none of them are actually visible from. LOS, thou art a cruel--wait, I can't see them but they can shoot me? What kind of crap is this? Screw this, Socks is hopping into melee range. Not that she gets to kill any--White and even Cookie kill the sectoids first.
That was "Very Difficult"? I suddenly feel more confident about things.
White is promoted to Corporal, as well as "Only person not to be hospitalized" and "Five behind Socks in killcount" (tied with Papa Clean). Saturn is out of action for two weeks, which is pretty minor considering how close he came to death; Socks is out for nine days; Cookie will be back in action in just under a week.
Nigeria is panicking. Great. At least it isn't China.
I buy a couple things, yes including another medikit.
The research is complete. It "bring us closer to matching the alien ships in combat," which will be useful as we have previously only been blowing them out of the air with damage easily repairable by the next invasion. I have them work on an EMP cannon next, because it promises to increase loot recovered from spacecraft we bring down, and because that archangel armor sounds impractical and I haven't found a situation where the skeleton suit came in handy, so mobility upgrades seem sort of meh.
The foundry is completed. I decide to have them start developing S.H.I.V. units.
A Large UFO is seen over North America. The only ship there? The Raven-3, same as the Raven-1 and Raven-2 in Europe. Well...let's cross our fingers and hope for OH THE HUMANITY! I order a new Interceptor, hopefully one of the upgraded ones that is closer to matching the alien ships in combat. For some reason, though, the UFO causes panic in the US. Those quirky Americans.
Abductions. Again. Seriously, I order an Interceptor and they say "It'll be here in three days". I order a Skyranger and they look at me like I'm crazy. THIS IS A PATTERN, NOT AN ISOLATED EVENT. And then the game crashes. Funny how this always follows one in a few Alt-Tabs. I wonder if I can use Chrome or something in one half of the screen and play X-Com in the other, or if that only works with PDFs and such.
This time, though, it was followed by a weird problem where the cursor hugged the lower-left-hand corner. Anyways. Turn came up while I was rebooting. Best kind of ninja.
piecewise: I'm a bit wary of just going for the high ground ever since my best sniper got killed due to lack of cover. And I eagerly await figuring out how to just run back to the Skyranger. It's probably something simple like moving everyone into the glowing rectangle, but meh.
Attempt to clean and fix the bloody gore-fan."If that was me, don't tell me."
