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The computer that I had this save on died, so I'll have to summarize the rest of it. My apologies to those who participated for the 'on-again, off-again' nature of this dynasty.
It actually continued for quite some time past this. We're near the end of July: the aliens and XCOM largely settled into a state of indifference as with satellite coverage on all the contributing nations alien abductions ceased.
The odd terror mission still took out a nation every now and then, but we did manage to capture an Outsider and locate the hidden alien base as the squad did just well enough to overcome continued attrition(usually about 10 losses a month). Less than a week before Christmas, the raid(Spectral Sleep) was launched. At that time, though I'm hazy on the details, we had a full squad at Lieutenant or higher.
It went well at first, but then we ran into an open area, heavy floaters on the left, elite mutons on the right, couldn't get them to charge, a Sectopod and more elites showed up when we moved forward .... yeah it wasn't pretty. Complete annihilation. Notably it was yet another Major McCloud heavy leading the way. And dying with the rest. Before the rest actually, if I recall correctly. There was also Slim, a British sniper who made a career out of missing important shots, and Santa -- seriously, Santa -- a quality support Lt. who was far more useful than his ridiculous moniker would suggest. The others were not as memorable.
The game didn't treat this as an automatic failure, but I did. The idea that we could just go back and they wouldn't have relocated/changed defenses I didn't like given the spirit of the dynasty. And so the game ended there. Humanity had fought the aliens to a standstill -- and was doomed to endless war until such time as they chose to surrender, if any. We weren't a threat to concern the aliens, but neither were we able to fight them off. They could accept the losses we inflicted on them, and vice versa. They would tolerate our control of large sections of Earth while they continued their plans -- whatever those are.
Casualties ended up being nearly 100 operatives by the time all was said and done. Double-digit in most months, with no end of that in sight.
Anyway, thanks all for participating, I'm sorry it had to end this way but it wasn't worth replacing a motherboard on a decrepit computer.
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