A great run; an ignoble defeat

[capthawk]

A while back, I celebrated my first victory over Ironman with no Knights lost.
Emboldened, my Squad entered into Ironman: Hell.

The victories mounted; by steady tactics we kept the entire Squad alive. I made it to the Hive Mind.

I got cute. Overthought it, tried out a new strategy. Mistakes mounted; compounded. Soon, a turn where at least two Knights were heat locked was the norm. We fought on, but I made two final, fatal blunders with not protecting TP west sufficiently and buying Armor kits when I should have bought Meditechs.

I quit when the first Knight popped, with nobody left with any real hp, and two or three in heat lock. I just couldn't watch them all die.

Felt like making the Superbowl after a long season as a favorite, only to get shut down.
Maybe next year(campaign)!

[Cory Trese]

Awwww ... sounds heroic. You might still be able to pull it off.

[capthawk]

Oct 12, 2016 11:45:00 GMT -5 Cory Trese said:

Awwww ... sounds heroic. You might still be able to pull it off.

Yes, but it's a big might. If I did pull it off, it'd be surreal. I didn't delete the Squad, they'll be on my saved games roster forever for their performance. It's just most likely everyone dies soon, based on the set up at the beginning of this turn.

I actually do want to try for it, in the spirit you posted, but I'm still too attached to them as of today, lol. I am falling in love with this new Ironman Squad I started however. I'm role-playing my new Capt as the brother of my Hell Capt😆

[contributor]

I've been amazed at times I was sure everyone would die, but then they pulled through. I've been surprised by how feazeable it is to find an easily defensible spot, hole-up and heal/cool everyone for 5-10 turns.

I just had a major goof on orbital guns that meant I had to go all the way back across the map after resetting what I thought was the last gun. I think the whole level took 80 turns and we killed 580 xenos but everyone made it through.

[capthawk]

contributor-

Now that's an awesome comeback! I'm with you on the hole up and regroup, but this poor Squad never seemed to get the chance lol. I'd get a couple turns, but we'd be forced on before we could get heat levels down.

[redartrats]

contributor How do you ever find the place/time to hole up and rest for 5-10 turns?! I find that my squad is almost constantly under assault from all directions. If I'm lucky sometimes I get 1-2 turns' break, but rarely more than that, and definitely not as many as 5-10 turns!

Of course, it's entirely possible that I've been playing the game wrong all this time...

[contributor]

You can't just hole up anywhere. It has to be somewhere with one or maybe two corridors leading to your team. If you can force the enemy into a kill zone you can normally be pretty efficient and in the long run recoup heat. It's hard if you don't have enough soldiers though. I recently posted a screenshot in another thread where I'm cooling down. One approach is covered in massive fire. A back door is covered by a turret and more fire and all my knights are taking turns at the final approach and eventual exit. Scouts are killing long range spitters and finishing off those who make it through the fire. Having turrets when you need to cool down is a major advantage.

[redartrats]

I usually deploy a good number of soldiers because I like using OW as crowd control. But I'm finding that my soldiers on OW duty are having a hard time cooling down. Or do you rotate between them for OW duty?

OTOH, recently I've been finding that spec'ing my engineer with Heat Sink 4+ helps a lot, since I always keep him maxed out at Engineer 16, so Heat Sink 4 gives 16+4*16 = 80 points of heat dissipated per use. That's quite a lot of heat eliminated, and I can do it twice per turn provided I keep my engineer cool.

Taken to its logical conclusion, I've actually thought about deploying two engineers to cool each other down, but currently it's hard to find a level with a high enough squad cap to be able to retain two engineers in the squad without significantly losing out on firepower, and more importantly, OW. Even if I'm willing to dispense with firepower, and engineers could lay turrets for OW, it's not easy to find a level that will give enough SP to deploy two engineers at once. There are some good candidates like the power grid relay levels, but it doesn't seem so practical as a general strategy, sad to say.

[capthawk]

redartrats -
I actually use two Engineers quite often, and on two or three of the massive levels I'll use three. I consider back up Engineers as heat Paladins, based on cost and Squad need for each particular level. Obviously, it takes a few level ups to have the points to spend and specialize them.
My A team Engineer is set up either to capture fast, or lay down mean turrets, and usually a small heat sink. High quickness, engineering and gunnery.
B team will either be "heat Paladin", or set up as a junior version of A, depending on what I need for the level. Spec is jack of all trades, rounding out willpower and tactics instead of building up quickness and gunnery as much.
My third Engineer is always pure heat sink. Lots of Willpower, so when and if I do call them out, they can heat sink for a few turns before overheating themselves.

IMO the piggyback Engineer heat sink tactic is great, the second cooling the first, then you have four heat sinks available.

[redartrats]

Hmm. I've never actually used 3 engineers before. Must be real expensive to deploy in terms of SP required! But I suppose that's not a problem if you take things slow.

[contributor]

When I pause to cool down I normally do it without Heat Sink. If I alternate those on OW and tactically use my other knights, normally it works well. Using Crippling to create log jams can really help. If you keep a knight on OW and don't reset it every turn they're normally pretty efficient. If you take them off OW to use burst fire and then reset OW they'll never cool. So you need your Cappy or someone else to do cleanup.

[redartrats]

Ah, good point. I always can't resist taking my soldiers off OW to use burst fire. That's why I always have trouble with overheated soldiers.