So I just had it where
[the scanning time for some supplies was -1 days]. I also had a soldier who would recover in -1 days... Ookaay...
I also just had the highest ranking unit I had (
a gunslinger with 29 kills to her name) get taken down in a single hit by a melee crit from a muton that should have been dead 3 times over. The muton had 1 health, no armor, no more grenade, and was out of cover. 3 units had over 80% shots... all misses. Had a mimic beacon I could have used, but I didn't think I needed it against the last friggin' unit on the map with 1 flippin' health left and no guaranteed grenade damage. Commander Ironman mode, man. Commander Ironman mode. 'Least I managed to bring her home. I always try to if I can to get their loot back and for sentimental/story building reasons.
All things considered with that bullshit death of my best unit, the campaign's still going pretty well. Going to suck to have to train up another gunslinger that far, though.
Oh, do I have a story for you all.
Let me set the scene here a bit. It's one of those VIP extraction missions, one of the ones where there's an engineer in a truck. As soon as I start the mission looks promising - my squad has spawned at the edge of a large open town square type area, right next to the building the extraction point is on top of. The target van is on the other side of the square, only halfway across the map. At the time, however, I thought that was the edge. "Rather small map," I thought.
Mission goes swimmingly up until I grab the VIP, where I spend a few seconds opening and closing the door on them. I start to get everybody back to the EVAC. I judge it'll take me two, maybe three turns if all goes well. I have like 7 turns left.
I end my turn. My furthest soldier hears a commotion behind the van somewhere, which I have somehow avoided bringing into view for now. "No problem," I think. "Not going that way anyway." Alien turn ends. Reinforcements incoming? Ok, where did they - ah, shit. My sniper, which has been sitting comfortably next to the EVAC square the entire mission, has a red flare directly behind him. My turn. I rush everyone as close as I can, putting those that make it to the roof on overwatch. End turn. Drop ship comes in, a MEC and two advanced troopers. Ok. No big deal. MEC is damaged by overwatch fire as it drops down to the ground floor, alongside one other trooper. The third enemy goes inside on the first floor to keep an eye on my sniper. My turn.
Here's where things became... weird.
I decide (I forget the exact reasoning as to why) to drop one person back down to the ground floor to hit the MEC. I select a spot behind a small counter, noticing in passing just before I click that the line demonstrating the path taken seems to move to a spot on the roof before extending off the roof and off the screen at the same elevation before reappearing back on the ground and moving to the correct spot. The soldier, amusingly, follows this path. She runs forward and off the roof, her elevation suddenly dipping so that she is now on the ground, and begins to run... back toward the van? What? She covers her dash distance and then covers it again, running straight through the van as if she were a spooky ghost and emerging from the other side. And still she does not stop. She runs further, into the building opposite the van and past some very bemused looking Mutons. She runs out the other side, into a park, and then off the map entirely.
Only then does she seem to reconsider.
Now she runs back, all along the same path, through walls and cars and fountains as she sees fit, past the Mutons again (all this without triggering them, somehow) and all the way back to the first building, where she takes cover at the box I instructed her to. Then she sits there, awaiting the order to fire. All this in a blue move.
This procedure repeats itself multiple times with multiple soldiers (and once with the VIP), at the end of which I am far too confused to even question it. I finish the mission and leave. Flawless.
So let it never be said that your troops will not run to hell and back for you. Because, as I discovered, they quite literally can.
