the crashed aircraft contained seven floaters, pictured above (screenshot stolen from google, i'm not playing on dosbox). four soldiers, two navigators and an engineer; soldiers are generally regarded as the lowest alien rank, navigators are fairly low and engineers are mid-tier. this particular squad was rather cautious, all of them staying in or around their crashed ship, which meant that we quickly had them surrounded and laid siege. in retrospect, we may have pushed too hard, too soon...
unfortunately, after a number of smooth, painless turns in which three aliens were killed without incident, we took three casualties ourselves in quick succession. mort got the joint most kills of anyone in our squad and died a hero, albeit a hero who got shot in the face from point blank range because he ended a turn standing right in front of the ship door like an imbecile.
however, let's end the recap on a positive note:
congratulations to hamburgerboy and manic ferocity, each of whom got promoted to sergeant off the back of their mission heroics! hbb stunned and ultimately killed a navigator, while manic incinerated the last of the soldiers. blurry_dreams and omni have been semi-promoted to squaddie. blurry might feel hard done by after killing a navigator and engineer--the most kills of any surviving soldiers--but i suppose nobody wanted a toesniffing meth addict in command. omni is extremely lucky to be alive after a floater missed three shots from just a few yards away as he was raiding the ship's bridge.
meanwhile, anomander rake, jimmy and arg remain rookies after doing sweet fuck all during this mission. jimmy's presence was particularly pointless, ambling around the edges of the map and leaning against trees catching his breath every 20 yards. he gets tired so quickly that it would've taken him about a hundred turns to actually reach the action. and for someone named after an immortal sword-wielding dragonlord, anomander sure acted like a total pussy here, hanging back by the ship for most of the mission. grow a pair, rake.
what the fatalities mean going forward is we'll be getting in some new GMD recruits, as well as giving other existing recruits a taste of action, so stay tuned!