Mmmmmhhhmmm thats much better. My right hip has been subdued, and my pain just had its fangs pulled, and of course now I am most pleasantly relaxed, just like being wrapped in a warmed up duvet made out of feathers and cotton wool, with a very nicely glowing sensation.
And just as good, didn't need to try a second time to put it in, registered perfectly on the very first attempt. Might have made that dose of MS somewhat on the strong side though, because I'm really
having to scrap like a demon in order not to just fall asleep at the computer with my cigarette lit. Just as well I decided to forgo taking a heminevrin along with the MS, then I would absolutely have
fallen asleep. One slightly annoying thing though is that I'm having a fair bit of orthostatic hypotension, presumably due to the tizanidine and/or clonidine as both are effective at dropping blood
pressure, making my vision blank out and getting dizzy on standing up, I needed to bend double at the waist when going to draw up the shot of MS and oxy, before I could again see.
Alright lying flat though or propped up a bit in bed, which I am now. Time to get back to my terror from the deep game methinks, my squad has a terrorist attack by the alien enemy to
suppress, and before that, is currently engaged in wiping out an entire military base of the bastards. Been bloody tough but so far I've not lost a single soldier from my combat diver team. Although its been a long, drawn out bloody mess of a campaign, with the war nowhere NEARLY over, with whilst I haven't had anybody killed, thats not been by much of a margin, plenty near fatal encounters, some critical injuries that would have killed my troops but for the new, if basic armor my science teams developed and engineering works built to order for me, although its meager protection
from the disgustingly powerful ultrasound based sonic weapons the enemy uses, even their smallest sidearm more usually results in an instant kill shot, even to an armored diver, hell, their handguns
alone are powerful enough to cripple and take out heavy tanks, saying nothing of the rifles, or their big fucking great sonic cannons. The one saving grace the sonic weapons have is a complete lack
of an automatic or burst fire capability, one shot is usually quite enough though, and seldom ever, ever survived by an un-armored soldier, although very rarely a sonic pistol round will only inflict a crippling wound that would prove fatal, but not instantly, allowing the newly developed medical kits I now issue to my men (and women of course) to be used to heal an otherwise
deadly wound before it kills the aquanaut, or to restore morale, heal some health etc. shoot them full of painkillers, or to revive a stunned, unconscious one with a stimulant agent.
And the explosive ordinance the buggers use, is so far in excess of the beefiest HEs x-com troops have available without having to capture, retrieve and research the alien's tech its just insane fr.ex
the ultrasound pulse grenades they carry obliterate walls and level buildings, unlike your side's entry level basic high explosive/antipersonnel grenades (although x-com get more variety, different types, such as dye grenades (think smoke grenade, but usable under water to provide cover), proximity mines, that sense nearby movement (will go off if disturbed by your own men though so care is needed to remember where you just put them, good for boobytrapping doors etc. so when opened the mine goes off straight in the hostile's face
), large, really heavy, although very powerful
explosive charges that can only be thrown a few feet at most, but are best set to time delay before detonating, and used not as a grenade, but a breaching charge for forcing sudden entry into buildings, blasting the sides of a downed alien flying submarine out, rather than going in by the front door, removing obstacles in the path of one's agents etc.
And their equivalent to the undersea-only usable x-com torpedo launchers, whilst it doesn't have any alternate ammunition unlike the diver-portable shoulder-fired torpedo launcher, which can fire
both a standard HE round, a bigger, heavier more powerful HE torpedo, or even white phosphorus incendiary tipped torpedoes . They work on a line of sight basis of course, while the alien heavy artillery has one type of round, but its a guided missile that can follow a set of programmable waypoints in its path to the target, even can be set to nip round the corner of something, fly up in the water, move over the obstruction, then made to go pop through a window or door, before unleashing a gigantic, enormously destructive blast that will kill even a soldier in the very heaviest of armor types, reduce battle tanks to scrap metal, or whole buildings to smoking, burning ruins, to say nothing of what happens if some little shit decides to pop one in the front door of your full troop transport, losing you the craft because there is nobody left alive to pilot it, or whats left of it, should I say:P because the thing is in effect, more akin to a man-portable guided tactical nuke.
The launcher however is more or less a dedicated weapon, big, heavy, takes up a lot of space if stowed away in the backpacks, and the ammunition, a single soldier usually can carry maybe 5-6 -7 rounds including one in the other hand, and a round loaded in the launcher (single shot only, no magazine so one needs to reload after each shot), and its really a two handed, dedicated weapon
best deployed, imo, as part of a two man fireteam, the second man carrying no launcher, only lots of spare rounds, a support weapon like a gauss rifle or heavy sonic cannon, or at a real pinch
maybe an autocannon loaded with high explosive or white phosphorus shells rather than the usual armor-piercing ammo for them, allowing one soldier to lay down a withering hail of high explosives
or phosphorus shells, whilst passing reloads to your first man packing the guided missile launcher, who only gets issued a gauss pistol, for a compact sidearm capable of auto/burst fire unlike all
sonics, or maybe a sonic pistol, and one spare mag for either, the support troop being issued both plenty spare ammunition, and no shortage of grenades. Sometimes though I'll assign a third man to the fire support/heavy weapons team with a more powerful automatic weapon, like a gauss rifle, who carries a few spare clips of HE and WP shells, reloads for the gauss weapons, as well as a pair of medical kits, a thermal tazer, basically something like a cattleprod, that works by freezing an enemy causing crippling hypothermia, useable at point blank range only, but requires no ammunition,
thats used for taking live aliens prisoner for interrogation, research and vivisection, so as to find out the kinds of missions undertaken by the enemy, what they were upto before being captured, flying sub designs and capabilities, depending on the role of the captured unit, medic, navigator/pilot, squad leaders, basic soldier goons, specialist terrorist species unit types deployed as the enemy
answer to x-com tanks, which the enemy do not possess at all, instead, having the likes of some really deadly hover/flight-capable drones, which pack a unique sonic weapon that looks capable of automatic fire, either that or the game just makes it look that way because of the insanely fast reaction time allowing the drones to fire repeated single aimed or snapped off shots in volleys
making it not a true automatic fire, but functionally the same thing. As well as the likes of an under water-only giant genetically-altered and surgically modified nautilus with a powerful and very
accurate sonic weapon, a giant jellyfish, although these can only attack at point blank range. Tough enough to kill, but not a particularly critical threat. Some big, heavy, bipedal monstrosity
basically a psionically controlled animal, dinosaur-esque, only with a gob full of razorsharp metallic teeth implanted, and a pair of huge sonic cannons strapped one either side of the body in a harness
They aren't common thankfully, because they are tough as as old boots, aggressive as blazes, able to unleash some pretty impressive destructive capacity, taking an awful lot of sustained, unrelenting and aggressive punishment before your men can manage to drop one for good. Pretty much a tank made out of teeth and meat really.
The worst of their terrorist specialist troop types though are what looks like a floating/hovering, flight-capable giant brain, with one eye, a parrot-like beak, and a cluster of venomous
tentacles used to paralyze your men with a sting driven up through their body into their spine and brain, reducing them to a zombified slave, which slowly shuffles around, taking swipes at your men
hitting hard enough, but not fast moving at all, and NOT the jammiest sandwich in a picnic. Nasty thing about them though is that once killed, or possibly, after a delay of several turns, your former
diver swells up until their body ruptures open, and skin is split, allowing the egg implanted at the same time as the diver gets reduced to a brain dead drooling version of a rabid dog to hatch
, releasing a brand new parasite, fully grown and ready to start slaughtering. Unless killed by incendiaries, or possibly by the use of overwhelming, indiscriminate force, not sure of that,
then it'll hatch and the new alien once it sheds the remains of your trooper can go on to do much the same, spreading like a disease as more and more are overtaken and infested.
Nasty little bastards and no mistake, vital to be made the highest priority anywhere they are present. Not just the best, but the ONLY policy to adopt is to exterminate them with extreme prejudice
ignoring other species even heavily armed, unless with those big fucking guided rocket launchers, they are destructive enough to need killing on sight because of the great power of the rounds
and HUGE blast radius (its bigger even than some of the smallest ships the aliens use!), any hostile sighted with a launcher needs to be shot dead immediately without giving them
the tiniest chance to react, or take a turn and loose off one of those things, as they are easily capable of wiping out an entire squad, including tanks, if in the area covered by the
detonation.
But the terrorist 'tentaculat' critters need just the same treatment to prevent an exponentially expansive infection that rapidly spreads through your squad, each zombified host killed resulting
in the birth of another tentaculat if not put down with a flame based weapon to inflict the fatal blow. Best policy being to get as many of your aquanauts as possible ready and spitting out a sustained barrage of shots until the bastard is very, very, very dead, from long range, not letting fingers leave triggers until they are aiming at a pile of goo and organ slop
My science teams are currently working round the clock to research their guided missile launcher and its ammunition in order to be able to sell off the old torpedo launchers and ammo, and take the
alien built disruptor pulse launcher weapon with them into the field instead, to give the buggers a taste of their own medicine.
Sooner the better too, because I'm busy fighting a base assault mission, and there have so far been several sighted and killed. What makes them so damn dangerous though
is that their venomous zombifying attack ignores armor completely, and a single wound is terminal, without the possibility of survival or of being treated. The only answer is to
put a bullet between your diver's eyes, preferably while they are still alive, if there is insufficient time and resources available to ensure killing the alien, if they have got close enough to attack, then its more expedient to murder your own men before they ARE attacked. Thankfully, there is an effective countermeasure against them, namely, using a tank to draw their 'fire' (melee capable only, they lack the means to make a ranged attack, thank all merry flying furry fuckdom!), as tanks cannot of course, be made into a zombie, and the creature actually doesn't do a great deal of damage
with its attacks, the danger is a special effect rather than simple wounding, game calculates it separately from damage inflicted, and the tanks heavy armors render them highly resistant, although
not impervious. So one can use the tanks to draw fire away from vulnerable troops, while the latter pound on the critter mercilessly.
