Long War - End Game Checklist

A list of everything that needs to be done to win the game, and a few tips on how to speed things up.

Towards the end of a Long War campaign, missions get dicey. Terror Missions with 30 enemies. Swarming Abductions on small maps with ethereals and heavy floaters. Pods of 8 muton elites. You get the idea. And usually these missions don’t offer much reward - your barracks is already full of master sergeants, and your squads already have the best equipment.

So we want to speed things up. Let’s line up all the hoops that need jumping through, so we can get to the temple ship faster.

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End of Game Checklist

Alien Base Assault
Build Hyperwave Relay

Build Firestorm + Plasma Cannon (or other end game weapon)
Shoot down Overseer

Ethereal autopsy (need 3 corpses)
Ethereal capture/interrogation

Volunteer at PSI 1350
Build Vortex Armor 

Build Gollop chamber 

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A few tips

It takes a long time to train a volunteer. If you don’t prioritize your psionics program, then maybe it gets started in September,¹ which is somewhat late in the campaign. We can make up for this late start by power leveling a few psions. I had my volunteer just as I was about to complete the Gollop chamber, in May of year 2.

I’ve already written about timing the ABA for early fall in this post; More Summer Strategy. Running the ABA early isn’t critical for end game scheduling, but it does help move things forward at a quicker pace.

Capturing an ethereal is tough to do safely. It can be made much easier by using the shadow device - this allows your squad to eliminate the entourage while ignoring the ethereal, cloak up, then go for a capture. In my latest campaign, I chose not to use the shadow device, and so I needed to find another tactic. Usually I just back my whole squad up so that the ethereal needs to double move. I really like this approach. Also, I treat every ethereal encounter as a potential capture, until I’ve successfully tazed one.

The end game construction requirements are elerium intensive (Gollop - 60 elerium; Vortex Armor - 100 elerium). This last campaign I skipped alien nucleonics and so my elerium was exhausted, and I was unable to build a 2nd particle cannon.

I still think this was the right decision. Nucleonics cost 150 meld - which is more than I have left at the end of the game (86). I would have been more severely constrained had I done the nucleonics project.

To build the Gollop chamber you will need 2 thermo generators, and 2 elerium generators. Then you want to tear down your labs. At this point in the campaign, you don’t need them any longer.

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Downing an Overseer

The most problematic obstacle to winning the game is shooting down an overseer. UFOs become stronger every month, so I want to prioritize this objective by building Firestorms and Plasma Cannons as soon as possible. Plasma is the cheapest weapon that can bring down an overseer, and choosing it allows me to skip pulse technology entirely. If you research pulse, then EMP cannons are strictly better and worth developing. Of course we will also need Penetrator Weapons, and Elerium Afterburners.

Here is the main problem; One Firestorm with a Plasma Cannon may not succeed in bringing down an overseer. And to have a solid chance at succeeding it will need to risk being shot down itself. Losing the firestorm, as well as a 10+ kill pilot, is a huge setback. In practice, it is hard not to retreat once your firestorm is over ~60% damage.

I got a bit curious while considering this problem and decided to do a bit of research - rerunning an overseer interception repeatedly to get an estimate of the odds we are facing.²

Balanced Stance is not optimal, with ~60% win probability.

1 Firestorm w/Plasma - 11 kill pilot - balanced stance
use aim immediately, then dodge, then boost. No retreat.
Down Overseer: 12
Lose Firestorm: 8

Defensive stance is the right choice,³ but with much lower hit chances the probability distribution is much wider and flatter - for that reason I ran it 100 times.⁴

1 Firestorm w/Plasma - 11 kill pilot - defensive stance
use dodge immediately, then boost. No retreat.
Win: 71
Lose Firestorm: 29

Shooting down an overseer 70% of the time is not great, and retreating when the firestorm is in danger will lower the odds even further, probably to less than 50%. In my 100 test runs, I had 71 victories, but 18 of those came with the firestorm at over 95% damage. The screen shots below are just a taste of how precarious this encounter can be.

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The safe path is to use 2 Firestorms with Plasma Cannons, rather than splitting up your firestorms to patrol more than one continent. With 2 firestorms on one continent it may take considerably longer to encounter an overseer,⁵ but this is usually how I choose to do it.

Another option I have experimented with, is to give a plasma cannon to an interceptor, and use it to soften up the overseer before my firestorm engages it. The interceptor has 135% penetration, as opposed to 160% for the firestorm, so it is doing about half as much damage with each shot. The interceptor is suicidal, using balanced stance + an aim module, which guarantees some hits. Usually, it does not survive for very long - my testing suggests this doesn’t significantly increase the odds of winning the encounter.

1 interceptor w/Plasma - 4 kill pilot - balanced stance
use aim immediately, then dodge. No retreat.
1 Firestorm w/Plasma - 11 kill pilot - defensive stance
use dodge immediately, then boost. No retreat.
Win: 14
Lose Firestorm: 6

I didn’t have the resolve to run this encounter thoroughly. We know this must improve the odds that our firestorm will bring down the overseer, but it clearly doesn’t help that much.

1. Typically I get psionics right before researching Gauss.

2. This encounter was on April 10th. UFOs gain 75 HP and 2% aim for every 30 points of alien research (about monthly).

3. Or at least it is the right choice in April, that may change as the campaign progresses.

4. While running the experiment it became obvious that I needed a huge sample size - I would have a 20 run streak with a 95% win rate, then lose 3 times in a row. Often both the overseer and the firestorm were one hit away from destruction, and the outcome was a coin flip.

5. In my latest campaign I waited 3 months for an overseer to fly over North America.