Thankfully, I didn't lose much progress thanks to the Magic of Autosaves.
Alien abductions. Right. Egypt, Brazil, India. Egypt has high Panic and is also offering engineers. So what if it's Difficult? Four Engineers are way better than a sniper or some credits.
Operation Sacred Ring
Huang, Papa Clean, Smirnova, Castillo. Four of our best and most experienced operatives, sent to investigate the abductions and neutralize the abductors.
Pretty normal, until old Castillo spies the first...well, let's call them aliens because they're definitely on their side, but they are even more definitely not just normal aliens. They're cyborgs. These floaty guys turn out to be relatively destructible, given that Huang shot one in the head and it kind of exploded. The other seemed more durable, or at least more agile. Smirnova hit, but the entire rest of the squad missed. And, because a damaged floaty robot guy isn't enough, a couple sectoids showed up. And the car Castillo and Papa Clean are taking cover behind explodes because eff you.
Smirnova runs right next to the cyborg and shotguns it into submission, because I'm 90% certain that's what Assaults are supposed to do. Castillo, who looks pretty beat-up, retreats into a convenient truck, which Huang heads for as a good elevated snipery position. Papa advances, with a car he took cover by along the way getting blown up. Smirnova advances...and notices another pair of floating cyborgs. Papa noticves even more freaking sectoids, because seriously do we have enough enemies yet? And a van explodes for no good (ie, tactical) reason. Smirnova gets hit badly by one of the floating bastards, while Huang headshoots the other and Castillo discovers he has 0% chance to hit. Papa Clean kills one of the sectoids before the car next to him explodes, lethally. Things are looking bad...
The truck Castillo just vacated and Huang is on explodes, with as much effect as the misses that Smirnova keeps receiving. The remaining floated greatly wounds Huang, bringing everyone still alive into two-bar territory, ie "I wonder if running would be a good option IRL." Then things start looking up--Smirnova destroys a sectoid, Castillo finishes off the floater, Huang reloads and gets killed by a lucky shot, crap. Well, Castillo makes a daring run out of cover to kill a sectoid, and Smirnova feels pinned by Overwatch so she maneuvers...getting shot anyways, and now not being able to line up a shot. So, she Runs and Guns and kills the bastard. Mission complete, but with heavy casualties. Dammit, I bet some Carapace armor would have been really useful...
Smirnova passed Papa Clean in killcount by one, which is kinda sad in a way. Mostly because P.C. is dead now. All survivors, and the dead guys, earned promotions--Sergeant for Smirnova "Socks," and Corporal for Castillo "Hasn't killed enough people for a nickname". Both are out of commission for a while, Smirnova for 15 days and Castillo for 17. Sacred Ring, Devil's Moon...maybe we should stop using sacred/mystical imagery in the mission names.
But at least we have precision lasers now, with laser versions of sniper rifles and shotguns available. I now realize that future lasers will just broaden the variety available and hence have no problem with outfitting the soldiers with them. Aside from lack of engineers, that is. The floaters begin being autopsied. Dr. Shen provides some ominous commentary about becoming the monster we fight, which frankly seems premature.
Then the floater autopsy result comes back. Apparently, we can use the data to enhance our own soldiers reflexes. Forget becoming the monster, I'm afraid of becoming the corpse. I'm thinking of Papa Clean, Huang, the others who have died under my command...I'd rather prefer they didn't. But we probably don't have enough alloy and engineers to outfit any soldiers with the Defense Matrix anyways. And it looks like it's only for the Interceptors. Shoot. My hopes of protecting my beloved soldiers by turning them into crimes against nature have been delayed.
Fun fact: I was discussing X-Com tactics with a friend. He came to the following conclusions:
1. It is hard to design a strategy when you don't know what the enemy wants.
2. Aside from the whole "First and last line of defense thing" (and presumably the only-able-to-send-one-team-of-four-at-a-time thing), X-Com is doing a pretty decent job at handling the aliens. He would have advised arming anyone willing to fight as a first line.
3a. Throwing the weapons of dead aliens at groups of aliens would be good if you didn't have a gun.
3b. Shooting aliens in the middle of massed groups? Good way to dissuade them from making those exploding weapons. (Or from assembling in massed groups.)
4. Snipers should be put inside of buildings instead of having them find what cover they can on the street.
