All support run

I have seen several threads talk about a run using only one class so I decided to do one. I chose support randomly using a RNG and assigning each class a number. I will be playing on classic difficulty using all female characters. The only mods I have are toolboks with the following options selected:

skip start movies
remove overwatch delay
skip alien discovered scene
disable panic friendly fire
disable continental panic increase after abduction mission
100% female recruits
All recruits to be support units

I have only played one XCOM game, this one. I have only just completed my first ever playthrough, it was on classic difficulty. I am a veteran of many tactics games though and a big fan of hard mode mods such as FFT1.3.

I plan on having 2-3 as medics (sprinter, field medic, revive, combat drugs, savior) and 3-4 soldiers (sprinter, smoke and mirrors, rifle suppression, dense smoke, sentinel) per mission. I am going straight for lasers, then scopes, then armors. If anyone has any suggestions about research ideas I am open to them as I do not have them memorized.

Sadly I will not be making this a LP, but would anyone enjoy reading how this goes? If so I will detail my missions in the following posts, otherwise I will just update when/if completed and with general tips I find useful.
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"What is it with you kid, ignorance or apathy?"
I dont know and I dont care

Having only played once I wasnt sure how OP that was; I think I will take that one off.
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"What is it with you kid, ignorance or apathy?"
I dont know and I dont care

Warning text walls ahead.

First mission all clear no injuries 3 promotions.
Shot down small scout UFO, managed to win 3 straight coin flips and land 50%
shots to take out two sectiods and an outsider. 4 promotions, 3 to squaddie

Council escort request, finally have one scope which made a world of difference.
The map had two buildings with an alley in the middle. I chose the left building
and proceeded along its roof. Used a squaddie to run point,
followed by my corporal who had the scope. Both rookies covered the escort each
each round. Got a lucky lucky overwatch to end a thin man that would have killed
my VIP. Was rewarded with a sarge and corporal was promoted to sarge.
Sgt Demon is going the soldier path while Sgt Voodoo is going medic.
Have one sat building, one sat waiting to be deployed, workshop building, and
beam weapons being researched. About 20 days until lasers, heres to hoping I
can buy them when they come out.

18 days passed with no activity, had to put the sat over nigeria for panic
reasons but it does net me some extra cash soon since council is in 2 days.

Operation Lazy Flame - sectoids and thin men galore. One long low office building
I opened with some good moves into full cover but my second turn was poor.
turn two revealed 2 sectiods down the alley and 3 thin men in the building.
Two thin men went to the roof flanking half my team, while the sectiods flanked
the other half. Managed to drop 2 thin men with 2 grenades, they are my most
effective offense at the moment.Took a 60% shot at one sectiod which missed,
and Demon even had the scope. Turn ended with 1 rookie flanked by thin man.
By some miracle the thin man used poison instead of shooting my rookie in the head.
This was both good and bad. As I have no med kits yet, it put a strict timer on
the rest of the map. Sectiods merged and missed but destroyed the wall Demon
and Voodoo were using as cover, damn those weapons. Took 3 units to kill the thin
man and then a rookie pulled off a 30% shot to kill both merged sectoids.
The rest of the map was easy mop up as I had the best position at that point.
Upgraded squad size, got another sat uplink building, sold some corpses to get
a power gen in the works too. Next priority is the get a raven for Nigeria.
BUT none of that matters because XCOM crashed before I could save, oh joy
time for a repeat.

Operation Lazy Flame round 2
Round 2 was easy because I knew where all the enemies were. This is why I dont
save scum. However the RNG was not as nice to me this time, resulting in a
rookie and a squaddie (I refuse to name them until they get nicknames) both
in recovery for 10 days.And I presently have $1
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"What is it with you kid, ignorance or apathy?"
I dont know and I dont care

UFO downed in Nigeria. Had a really tough time with this one for some reason.
I think I played it too aggressive cause I was tired. My last rook was shot
turn 2, dropped her to 1 health and caused her to panic the rest of the mission.
At that point it was 4v10 (6 sectoids and 4 thin men active at once) and Demon,
my leading offensive unit, was also dropped to 1 health. I cleared all three thin
men on my first full turn after activating. In hopes of backing off and drawing
the sectiods out while the poison clouds cleared up. This worked for the most part
evening the odds to 4v5 but I used all of my grenades to get them down this much.
I did manage to get two laster rifles, Demon and Headshot have them. They
were not much use though typically doing 2-3 damage per shot. The last 3 sectoids
refused to be lured into my trap. One was standing on an elevated platform in
full cover with the benefit of being merged. The sectoid activating the merg was
unreachable without activating sectiod #3's overwatch and standing in half cover
after. I simply was not going to risk that. Instead I suppressed sectiod #3
with Demon, she was in full cover, and had Headshot flank him. Headshot did
not live up to her name and missed. Luckily I had set up an overwatch wall which
kept them from moving but I suffered more injuries next turn. Finally Headshot
was able to kill sectiod 3 and Voodoo was able to kill both merged sectoids in
a single blast. Good thing I decided to have her run the outside of the ship
and go in the back enterance. I think suppression is going to be a huge part of
my surviving the future battles. Ended with 3 gravely injured units including
Demon. Voodoo and Headshot will lead the next foray into XRay territory...

Just FYI I am saving at the start of every mission and once I return to the Geo. The only reason I am not doing ironman is to avoid bugs/crashes. I will never save mid map, if someone dies they die, thats just how XCOM goes.

That ends this session of play. I probably wont get any more in until after Christmas, so enjoy the holidays and send me research tips please.
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"What is it with you kid, ignorance or apathy?"
I dont know and I dont care

Well some bad news, something happened to my notes file and I lost all of my mission recaps. I do know that I have lost 4 soldiers to the alien invasion, and my suppression-to-flank tactics are working.

Since I dont have my notes I will give a few general tips for anyone playing an all Support run:

1. I have found bringing 2 units as medics and 4 units offensively minded (soldiers) works best

2. Never split up more than two groups of three, one medic and two soldiers per group.

3. Typically I have the groups advance at the same rate while keeping a bit of distance between the two groups. This allows for easier suppression-to-flank tactics.

4. Here is what I mean by suppression-to-flank. Within each group you have two soldiers who are capable of suppressing a unit. If you alternate suppressive fire between those two, then you can move that entire group to flank the enemy. Always flank the outermost enemy as this allows you to flank the entire enemy group easily.

5. Only have one group using suppression-to-flank tactics at a time. The second group should be used for holding. Holding requires just enough movement to ensure that the enemy group doesnt disappear or flank your team. Typically the holding group will use lots of overwatch/hunker down/smoke grenades so its a good thing each soldier has 2 smokes (that gives you 8 per map of dense smoke and 2 of combat drugs)

6. These tactics are tricky because everything in this game is situational. It will take you some time to learn how to use them for each enemy group properly. That being said patience is key to keeping your squad alive.

7. Grenades are your friend, especially early game. Early on grenades are your most reliable way to kill things. You dont have good aim, you dont have suppression, so blow stuff up if you have to. Later on grenades are more useful destroying cover than they are doing damage. You shouldnt need to destroy cover often if you use suppression-to-flank tactics.

8. You dont need 100 squad members. I have found 15 to be the perfect number so far. That gives you 2 full groups and an extra half group, or 10 soldiers and 5 medics.

9. I have been pretty risky in the early game and gotten lucky. No seriously go reread the mission recaps, I took a lot of coin flip shots and got lucky with them. You should expect to lose units earlier than I did. Especially before you get suppression.

That's all I have for now, hopefully nothing happens to my notes this time and I can keep you all updated.

PS is anyone reading this stuff anyway?
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"What is it with you kid, ignorance or apathy?"
I dont know and I dont care

ninjaofdarkness posted...

I think the "removing continent panic" thing is a bit much

If you read the third post in the topic you will notice I removed it. So everything panic related is back to normal. You don't see me commenting on it much because tactics for dealing with panic are the same as a normal squad run.

As for covering fire, I have not incorporated it yet. I really like sprinter. However, if I lose a high ranked soldier then I will have their replacement take it.

Also glad to see someone is reading this.
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"What is it with you kid, ignorance or apathy?"
I dont know and I dont care

Been playing on planes (I fly a lot for work), so I have not been taking notes.
Just finished all the hyperwave research, working on updating my interceptors.
I lost two units (RIP Hawkeye and Loco) in the fight with the ethereal. As it turns out, running all support seriously limits your damage per round capabilities. The 4 living units are all gravely injured, so basically I lost an entire squad for what a month? Funds are a bit tight at the moment so I am not ordering replacement units just yet. I approached the ethereal too quickly because of a panicked captain. I think if I had been able to spend a little more time with setup then I could have made it out with only injuries.

The last bit of the game is what has worried me the whole time. Well really sectopods is what has had me worried. Plus in my first (and only other) playthrough I encountered a sectopod, berserker, and ethereal at the same time. If that happens again running like hell will be my only chance of living. Anyway a secto plus its drones is going to be more than enough to cause me a huge headache at this point. At least I have captured enough xrays to have plasma rifles on all my units.

New plan is to kill some time getting ghost armor and the money to make some of it, as well as money to buy some archangel armor. Oh and I need to level 2 new "soldier" support units since I am down to 8 useable ones. I do hereby promise to take better notes for the story missions (remember I am researching the ethereal device) which I think is just the last assault. As usual it will probably be some time before I update again because I am so busy, but it should be noted that if I can successfully deal with sectopods then it should be relatively easy to finish this run.

Cheers
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"What is it with you kid, ignorance or apathy?"
I dont know and I dont care

Bump

I'm at the Barrett Jackson car auction so not been playing just didn't want topic to close
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"What is it with you kid, ignorance or apathy?"
I dont know and I dont care