Operation Enduring Chant (Target Escort - Chihuahua, Mexico)

Gentlesophs, I am your host, the Kid With A Pen, and welcome to XCOM:  War Interminable - my playthrough of XCOM:  Enemy Unknown, with the Enemy Within expansion, the Operation Slingshot DLC, and most importantly the Long War mod.  Links to all of these can be found on the "What is XCOM:  War Interminable?" page below this post.

Today, Strike One is headed to Chihuahua, Mexico, to rescue the survivors of a UN peacekeeping team led by Marine Gunner Peter Van Doorn.  His team was ambushed on a highway overpass, and are still pinned down by heavy alien fire.

So, on to the mission!  Our team today is:

Our infantry, Plunder

Our scout, Stalker

Our Valkyrie, Bull

Our other infantry, Zilch

Our sniper, special contributor Brienne "Lady Grey" Frost

Our rocketeer, Prototype

Our squad leader and medic, Scooby

And our other sniper, Checkmate

Plunder hadn't gone a yard, when contact!  A Muton and two Floaters!

Prototype lets loose a rocket to start things off.

Lady Grey picks off a Floater.

Not to be outdone, Checkmate checkmates the Muton.

Plunder plunders the last kill.

Scooby spots a survivor, and moves up to retrieve him.  He identifies himself as Specialist Glenn Friendly, United States Marine Corps.  He helpfully points us in Van Doorn's direction, and in true Marine bravado, offered to get us to the Skyranger if we can get to Van Doorn.

The rest of the squad advances and overwatches.

And, in the aliens' turn, the car the Floaters had taken cover behind blows up.  I wasn't aware that there were still Pintos on the road.

Stalker throws a battle scanner ahead to chck for hostiles.

Prototype steadies aim, and the rest of the squad advances and overwatches.

In the aliens' turn, a pod of Mutons and Floaters wanders into the battle scanner's field of view.

Stalker calls out the contact, and everyone holds for a moment, in case the enemy is alerted to our presence.  However, the aliens give no indication that they're even aware of the battle scanner's existence, so the squad presses on.

Plunder gets eyes on Van Doorn.  He's trying to hold the aliens off with his sidearm, but his efforts seem to be ineffectual.  That said, his aggressive posture seems to be intimidating them somehow.

For now, we need to get into position to support him when the time comes to extract him.  Prototype steadies aim while the rest of the squad overwatches.

The aliens decide to go to high ground to take Van Doorn out...

...and they run into my largely ineffectual overwatch trap.

Well, at least we've given them something else to shoot at.

The Floaters take shots at Bull and Zilch, but miss with both of them.  One of the Mutons hit Zilch.

However, Plunder kills a Floater and wounds a Muton.

Zilch hits another Muton.

Checkmate kills a Muton and a Floater from extreme range.

However, his In The Zone killing spree ends when he hits a Floater but fails to kill it.

Fortunately, that's what we have Lady Grey for.  She puts that Floater in its place, six feet under.

Bull kills the other Muton.

Stalker hits a Floater that got a flank on Van Doorn.

Scooby moves up to Zilch and patches him up.

The rest of the squad overwatches.

One Floater falls to my overwatch trap.

Zilch hits the second Floater on overwatch.

Stalker finishes it off.

Checkmate reloads his sniper rifle and steadies aim.

Stalker reaches Van Doorn and escorts him back to the squad.

Lady Grey reloads.

Bull uses One For All to give Van Doorn some decent cover to hide behind.  "I don't know what outfit you're from, but I've never seen equipment like that before," Van Doorn remarked in awe at our body armor, laser weapons, and Bull's MEC Suit.  Given that his job in the Marines is to keep tabs on infantry weapons used by friendlies and enemies, as well as how they work, it's understandable that he'd be surprised to be rescued by people with equipment that's completely unknown to him.

Bull takes the opportunity to reload.

The squad overwatches.

In the aliens' turn, some Thin Men drop down behind us.

Stalker throws another battle scanner, to the far side of the trench where one of the Thin Men dropped in, hoping to get eyes on its position.

In fact, Stalker's battle scanner reveals the position of a completely new pod.

Checkmate picks off the Sectoid in that group, triggering the pod.

The two Mutons that were escorting it run in all directions, not at all sure where the shot came from.

Checkmate is in the zone.

Checkmate hits the Thin Man, but fails to kill it.

Lady Grey scores a critical hit on one of the Mutons.

Moving to engage the Thin Man, Bull triggers its overwatch.  The damage is superficial.

The same cannot be said for the Thin Man, after Bull's finished hosing it down with his minigun.

More Thin Men drop in.  One of them dies to overwatch fire immediately upon landing, while the others are more fortunate.

Plunder and Scooby reload.

Bull misses a Thin Man.

Checkmate takes down a Thin Man.

Prototype reloads.

Lady Grey misses a Muton.

The rest of the squad falls back towards the Skyranger, escorting Van Doorn.  They all overwatch.

A Thin Man runs Bull's overwatch.

Van Doorn and Friendly book it for the Skyranger.

Bull misses a Thin Man, and then reloads.

Lady Grey reloads.

Stalker reloads her carbine.

Checkmate and Prototype steady aim.

The Thin Men advance.

One of them spits on Bull and Scooby, where it will do the least good (they're both immune to the damage effect of acid - Bull because he's a MEC Trooper, and Scooby because she's carrying medkits).

Scooby patches Bull up, and also neutralizes the acid.

Scooby then proceeds to miss a Thin Man.

Bull, however, does not.

Stalker hits another Thin Man.

Checkmate and Prototype steady aim.

Bull reloads.

Lady Grey steadies aim.

The rest of the squad overwatches.

Zilch zilches a Thin Man on overwatch.

Checkmate, Prototype, and Lady Grey steady aim.

The rest of the squad overwatches.

Stalker runs a Muton's overwatch in order to get eyes on both of them.

She hits the Muton at full health, while conveniently holo-targeting it.

Lady Grey finishes it off.

Scooby orders Lady Grey to fire again.

She takes aim at the last Muton...

...and gets the kill!

Op Success!

Lady Grey's going to be out for a couple weeks on fatigue time...

...but she got promoted to Tech Sergeant, and she gained the Platform Stability perk, which gives her a bonus to aim and crit chance if she doesn't take any costly actions first.  Perfect for an up-and-coming In The Zone sniper.

Scooby made it to Captain 5, and gained Savior, which gives her more medkit charges and makes them heal four more HP per use.

We got a pretty decent haul, but the best is yet to come.

See, in addition to the reward and the haul, Long War also gives you two custom hero units:  Peter "The General" Van Doorn, and Glenn "Freaky" Friendly.  They're every bit as expendable as Zhang and the others, but still, it's pretty cool.

Speaking of Zhang, Vahlen and Shen went ahead and MEC'd him.  Not long from now, we'll have our first Shogun.

Back to the Hologlobe!

Brazil wants Thin Man corpses?  Go ahead!

Dr. Shen's team has invented an arm-mounted flamethrower for our MEC Troopers.  Rhino's gonna love this.

While you're at it, Shen, we need some MEC Suit upgrades.  Let's start with replacing the minigun with a laser cannon.

Also, a holo-targeter would be nice for our Shoguns and Valkyries.

France wants alien alloys?  Well, they're literally falling from the sky these days.

And, we have improved medkits!  Our Savior medics should be healing close to 10 HP per charge now.

Back to the Hologlobe!

The Council Report for August 2016 is most favorable.  I'll see if I can't arrange an early screening of Rogue One for the troops.

Also, we'll need more interceptors.

Since we'll need some satellites for those interceptors to protect, we'll need to sell some elerium to pay for them.

Speaking of which, now that we have the money, we can build some more satellites.

Let's also get a flamethrower for Rhino.

Dr. Vahlen's team has learned a lot of interesting things cutting open those Berserkers.

However, I'm more interested in your ideas for upgrading our air wing.  Specifically, your "super skyranger" proposal is the most intriguing.

Argentina can have our Meld.  Just make sure it doesn't fall in the hands of those wacky geriatric Nazis, okay?  Okay.

And, we have our newest additions to the air wing:  "Hannibal"  de Villiers...

...and "Leeroy" Al Henadi.

Shen's team informs me that the holo-targeter is finished.

India's willing to pay cash for our unused alloys?  Don't mind if I do!

Thanks to India's generous offer, I can now get a Kinetic Strike Module.  Now, to keep Rhino from calling it a "rocket fist."

Also, we should research some new Foundry projects.  Let's start with some long overdue infantry equipment upgrades.  I think Van Doorn had some input on these designs.

Also, Van Doorn suggested we get our security detail rated on our new body armor.  I don't think he realizes that Phalanx armor isn't standard issue here at XCOM.

Scout UFO over Mexico!  Get up there, Leeroy!

LEEEEEEEEEEROYYYYYYYYYY JENKINS!

Well, that went about as well as expected.  I only hope that Flight Officer Al Hanadi managed to eject safely before the aliens blew his interceptor to pieces.

However, Hannibal proved himself by taking the UFO down in Leeroy's place.

Training's complete on the armor.  Now, Van Doorn just needs to figure out a training regimen for the laser guns.

Augmentation on Chilong is complete.  After a little adjustment period, he'll be just as capable as he used to be.  Probably more, given he'll be in a MEC Suit.

Also, the flamethrower is finished.  This may be just the thing we need to unleash Rhino's latent arsonist side.

The laser lance is finished, bringing our MEC firepower to parity with our infantry weapons.

Dr. Vahlen's team has finished their study on improving our air wing.

On that note, let's improve our air game.  Dr. Vahlen, let's get to that Raider analysis!

UFO sighted over Miami!  Bring it down, Peanuts!

Peanuts has to disengage due to severe damage.  The UFO pulls away.

India wants Drone wrecks?  You're welcome to them!

Raider analysis is complete.

Get to work on analyzing those Abductor UFOs.

Kinetic Strike Module is finished.  Rhino's gonna be a sight to behold pummeling aliens at close range.

Abductor analysis complete.

Gauss weapons, you say?  Lead on, Dr. Vahlen!

Gauss weapons are a new weapon class in Long War.  For the most part, they use the XCOM ballistic weapon models (ballistic weapons in Long War use the EXALT ballistics models), and they do slightly more damage than beam lasers, and while they don't get the aim bonus for laser weapons, they tend to have more ammo (except for the Gauss Long Rifle, which only has one shot per magazine), and they have a chance to negate one point of damage reduction.

The Gauss Long Rifle and the machine gun variants are practically late-game weapons in their own right, especially as the Gauss Long Rifle comes with HEAT Ammo.  You do not know devastation until you have seen a pair of snipers with Gauss Long Rifles take down a Sectopod in one round of shooting (neither of which has Double Tap).

Uncle Sam wants flight computers?  Anything for our southern neighbors!

New Combat Systems research is complete!

I think we could use a couple alloy bipods for our snipers.

And, we have an Abductor coming in to land in Canada.  XCOM North America's entire interceptor fleet is out of commission, and even if it weren't, I wouldn't risk it against a large UFO.  Well, all we can do at this point is ambush it on the ground.

So, let's get our team together!

Leading this mission is our medic, Patreon contributor Lynne "Vixen" Triplett.

Zilch and Patreon contributor Oliver "Rascal" Albright are our infantry.

I need to retrain Chilong, because MEC Troopers have different perk trees from their old classes.  Shogun come from engineers, and can be outfitted to do just about anything.  They start with Collateral Damage - an area effect attack using ammo from their primary weapon that's mainly good for blowing up cover.  With that in mind, I'm building Chilong to be expert at cover destruction and use of explosives.  HEAT Warheads and HEAT Ammo will make him deadly against robotic units, Mayhem is good for increasing the blast radius of his grenades, and Sapper makes him better at cover destruction.

On the other hand, I don't have any way to give him grenades yet, since MEC Troopers can't use hand grenades.  Weapons research will eventually give me access to grenade launchers, but until then, Chilong's talents won't really find expression.

Also, I'm starting a new practice where every MEC Trooper wears a helmet or a mask of some kind.  The head's already ridiculously small compared to the MEC Trooper's body, and it simply doesn't make much sense to leave such a vital component unarmored - it's even more of a glaring weak spot than on infantry because of all of the armor plating surrounding everything else.

Also, all but one of my MEC Troopers were augmented in order to cut their reactivation time from months to days after suffering a critical wound.  They've probably had to have parts of their heads replaced, too.

Anyway, Chilong's packing a laser lance, the kinetic strike module, the holo-targeter, and a SCOPE.  On the off-chance he misses or fails to kill his target, they'll be painted for the next shot.

Boom Boom is coming along as our rocketeer.

Peter "The General" Van Doorn joins us as a rocketeer.  We don't have many of them, and he had a pretty good starting aim.

Anyway, his build is pretty standard for rocketeers at Tech Sergeant.

His loadout is pretty standard, as well.

Stalker is coming along as our scout.

And finally, we have Caper as our Assault.

Strike One is on approach to the landing site.

And that's where we'll leave this update for today!  Join us tomorrow for Operation Banished Serpent!  Remember, you too can join the fight by going to https://www.patreon.com/user?u=177434 and subscribe today!  Every subscriber gets to have a rookie named after them!

Can't subscribe to my Patreon campaign, but still want in on the program? Go here to see how you can get in: http://xcomwarinterminable.blogspot.com/p/join-fight.html  With that, I hope to see you next time!