My videogame music in the background, plus the thump-thump-thump of heavy autocannon fire and bursting of large caliber high explosive and incendiary shells, mixed in with some semiauto fire from a couple of guys carrying a pair of heavy cannons so oversized for a human even in powered armor, that they belong mounted on a tank (although the tank accompanying the strike team is mounting an experimental laser weapon, the pair of regular tanks packing cannons of the typical armor-piercing shell flavour have been transferred to a secondary base mainly intended to launch air to air interceptions of UFOs in order to bring them down and send in the ground strike teams for a bug-hunt, covering all the narrow alleys, checking houses for snipers, anything like farmer's crop fields I just hammer with incendiary shells or white phosphorus-loaded shoulder-launched heavy rockets to burn the sneaky bastards out.
Plus the occasional quiet-ish 'swooosshhng....agonized screaming' of plasma rifle and heavy plasma cannons having their power cells emptied from being hammered on full automatic/three round bursts. Very quiet for a not far off man-sized cannon of a rifle, almost reminds me of a silenced handgun only with more of a woosh-ing, hissing sound. Generally followed by the screeches and screams of various kinds of alien critter that survived their craft being smacked out of the sky by captured aircraft-mounted plasma beam weaponry, short range automatic laser cannons and extremely long-ranged, nuclear-tipped air to air missiles. Research teams are busying themselves developing some kind of antimatter/nuclear implosion based even longer-ranged air to air 'missile' (more of a spherical something-or-other thats intended to implode on impact, I think, something along the lines of a guided missile tipped with a boosted hydrogen bomb warhead only with the tritium core thats used to boost the yield of thermonuclear weapons replaced with an antimatter based core. Not finished the research on the ammunition yet but the launchers are already in production by the engineer teams. Craft can only mount two launchers and if they do that, then thats ALL they get, no plasma cannon mount, no lasers, close-range autocannon/miniguns, or any of the available air to air missiles. Two rounds apiece, total of four per interceptor craft with full loadout. But for the low ammunition capacity they should make an AWFULLY big fucking mess.
Even the enemy with their advanced technology can only outrange these new antimatter-implosion nukes with the very largest of their battlecruisers the ones they generally send out when they are really, really REALLY pissed, by the success of the human organization controlled in this game, I.e when they have had flight after flight after flight either blasted out of the sky in order to send in a combat squad and recover the tech, kill or capture enemy, and generally make a humongous bloody mess of the place. Or else said alien craft occasionally don't get that far, and either a lucky shot or oversized aircraft weapon doesn't down the craft but instead, blows it to smithereens, nothing left, crew vaporized and structure of the craft torn to pieces, nothing recoverable. Or they may be caught by troop transport aircraft as the enemy craft actually land, which they have to in order do whatever it is they are after doing, mission wise. See them landing, or tail them with a transport craft laden with fireteams and a tank so as to jump them the moment they land. Its the best way of ensuring one bags and tags everything available for research, all the specialized alloys that go into the construction of the UFOs themselves, the navigation systems useful for developing flight-capable powered armor, not to mention better, faster interceptor craft that can take more punishment, one thats a hybrid consisting of a scaled down troop carrier-fighter of a sort, can't carry tanks AFAIK, one weapon mount rather than the usual two a considerably smaller capacity for troop numbers. Not sure about general tech capacity of the kind intended for dishing out abuse in dark alleys, houses but unlike all but one of the other aircraft available is not an either-or decision. The rest, bar one either carry troops and kit or they catch enemy aircraft and hammer them out of the skies so that craft of the former kind can go in afterwards and go splatter some bugs.
(the troop transports, bar the very very late in the game and research-intensive as hell plus seriously seriously looooong build time lack weapon mounts but have a much longer range although slower speed than the interceptor rapid-response assault planes, but can carry a strike team, all heavily, heavily armed, plus an xmas-come-early stack of grenades, stunners, motion detectors, medical kits to stabilize otherwise fatal woundings, large demolition charges, autocannon, rocket launchers, and plenty of other nasty little toys besides. Plus a tank, and in this case, the largest and messiest destructive device that is ever seen on land missions (I.e not air to air rounds)
That last hybrid transport-interceptor is just plain ol' MEAN though. Dirty great big fucker, capable of carrying nearly 25 soldiers, or slightly less and a few tanks, mounting anything from armor-piercing conventional tank-cannon rounds to rocket launchers, laser weapons, or even hovertanks that pack heavy plasma cannons capable of carrying about 250 rounds and whence anytime spatial concerns impede their progress, either levitating over the obstacle, or vaporising a pathway through solid rock. Or theres one last one, again a hovertank, but onr that fires a similar antimatter/thermonuclear implosion ammunition, only with pre-launch manual guidance. One simply sets the coordinates for point-to-point travel of the round and the height at which the shell is to travel (capable of free flight, pretty much, and finally the target itself, or if one sets the coordinates to kind-of 'bounce' the shell down to the ground level, back high up into the air and then smack downwards, slam-dunking it right in the middle of, well, in the midst of anything you want vaporized and.or reduced to smoking, burning glass.
And there is a similar, man-portable, even more powerful version, again guided, with the main difference of rather than being supplied by the onboard magazine of the hovertank, the MANPAD version is single shot only, reloadable however. And being, bar a sidearm such as a laser or compact little (if lethal enough) automatic plasma pistol) essentially a dedicated weapon, it allows for a significantly heavier, far messier, and much more devastating (as if the version on the hovertank wasn't powerful enough....lol rounds so damn large a friggin' TANK can only carry 8 shells, and for the handheld, shoulder-launched guided missile launcher edition, the rounds are I find, best distributed amongst the squad so the troops aren't weighed down by the heavy-as-hell ordinance they are packing. Especially the gunner him/herself who's got to lug about a tactical thermonuclear/antimatter based weapon and several shells plus one in the clip.
And, since the trooper I have in a dedicated role as, well, nuke-er-guy is one of the physically strongest of any team throughout every single base, he also gets to carry not a plasma or laser pistol for his sidearm, for those nasty little situations where something ugly, fast and wanting nothing better than to eat your eyeballs from their sockets legs (or oozes, slithers, slimes, floats or levitates itself using some pretty extreme degree of psi power) and starts blasting away or trying to either panic you into dropping weapons and fleeing, going all berserkirgang and starts randomly pointing your sidearm (in the case of launcher guy, the AI lacks the intelligence to be able to set coordinates on a soldier under psionic control who's packing one of those buggering great big blasters. Just as well really
, but he can do enough damage with the heavy ass plasma cannon he wields one-handed as though it were a little pistol.
