I guess i will chip in with one thicc of a post.
This is spoiler free unless you peek at it
1) Shotguns are the best early game weapon vs most enemies
Shotguns in X-Files have larger range than you would think, not the small one. The one you can unlock very early on, the long one that can fire AP rounds.
- Can kill most enemies with snapfire in 1-2 hits, pretty much one hits smaller creatures like spiders and most low-tier cultists, also low TU to snap fire compared to what it can do
- Cheap ammo, can switch to AP rounds
- Can fire baton shells that can stun targets so you can simply switch ammo on the flight if you want to take someone and you dont need to bother with tasers or stunrods
Shotguns also have advanced variations so its not like this weapon type will disappear. There are also some weapons that are actually pistols or cannons that can fire shotgun ammo.
2) Dossiers give council rating boosts
You know, if you are lazy, you can spend an entire month doing the absolute minimum and focus on research and training and make up the score to be in positive by researching dossiers.
3) Dont ignore melee weapons
As trashy as they might look like, stabby and smashy tools are actually insanely lethal because a damage type like Cutting is hardly protected against. Against sectoids you might even see that your agent simply caved his skull in with his weapon stock or just with hand to hand combat.
Mini tip - Give your heavy weapon troops something like a knife when you enter close quaters like UFO interiors. They will use their secondary weapon instead of trying to smash the enemy with the weapon and a precise Tritanium knife will eviserate sectoids extremely quickly and its really cheap TU wise so there will be many stabs.
Mini tip 2 - Your armour dictates hand to hand combat damage.
Mini tip 3 - While plasma swords and energy lances
look cool i think they are abit of a overkill in the game and have absurd TU costs. Tritanium swords and stabbas are enough.
Mini tip 4 - The best melee weapon in the game is the Master's Zhu (Or whatever his name is, the ninja grandpa) katana,
this thing recieves damage from psi strenght on top and can be used in one arm compared to 2 with normal variation. And this thing will kill majority of the game enemies in one or two slices. Hell you can even destroy things like sectopods with them. Just like he did with mine....
4) You can reverse engineer armours in general from certain enemy... the MiB armours if you get their corpses and you can get absolutely amazing armours from them.
Mini tip - thermal weapons (Lasers/Plasma/fire) or really large explosives can destroy bodies so try to switch to melee, stun or balistic weapons if you want the corpse
- The flying Stormtrooper armour, aside from really hefty stats, aim boost and also jetpack !
- The powerarmour you get from the black hefty gents with gasmasks, this is one of the top tier armours in the game btw that has bonus carrying capacity on top of massive armour so your soldier can carry entire inventory worth of rockets, mortars and blaster weapons
Mini tip 2 - When fighting monsters, give your stormtrooper a flamethrower and simply hover over enemy heads and boil them. Facing melee enemies ? Well too bad for them, even if they have ranged attack like Quil boar they wont even dent his armour
Mini tip 3 - The tech behind power armours and Stormtrooper is .... complicated so MiB bases will be the only source of income of these armours for some time.
5) Some weapons you should NOT overlook
Mortar - Requires really strong soldier to carry and set up time, but its not uncommon to fire a mortar and then hear the screams of 6-8 enemies dying at once on the other side of the map as a mortar shell just leveled a floor on a clinic. Can fire incendiary rounds and smoke rounds too.
Mine - This is rather specific tool for specific job. You can actually throw mines, use them to secure possible doorways, the mine should be able to one shot pretty much any humanoid enemy par for the heavy armour dudes. Mines proved themselves during Lotus HQ raid since you can turn those corridors to death traps for ninja's to trigger. See that door there ? Chuck a mine there... just in case.
Tank/sectopod's laser cannon - This thing actually.... have you seen how much damage it does ? Like it will one hit KO majority of game's units. Yours included unless you are decked out in powerarmour or juggernaut suit and laser weapons on vehicles have infinite ammo.
Flamethrowers - High risk, high reward weapon type due to low range. Most creatures are vulnerable to fire damage
and it also causes panic. Once you get a flying armour of any kind, this weapon will ascend to god-tier weapon since you pretty much eliminated its main weakness. Also burning enemies is a good way to prevent any unwanted... "Turning" so they stay dead.
Incendiary weapons in general - Despite their lower damage, them being able to panic enemies is just great. Its also a great way to flush people from cover
Flashbangs - Causes hefty stat penalties and reduced TU's on victims, can be used in undercover missions.
6) Read carefully what you can bring.
Some missions require specific arsenal, for example you need scientist outfit to enter asylum to bust some ghosts.
Mini tip : Delay cyberweb ship HQ raid until
you get a sectopod. Sectopod has such a absurd armour that he will be pretty much invincible to the small laser fire,
Mini tip 2: Powerarmour is rather universal, like until you research it yourself you dont even know its stats, let alone that it can be used ... like underwater
7) You can pretty much overpower everything with any weapon type if you try hard enough.
Like shooting ghosts with machineguns until they go away,
robots getting riddled with buckshots, massive monsters being withered away by pistol fire.... but i would suggest having more diverse arsenal.
8 ) Diverse but focused troops.
Due to the absurd number of enemies in this mod, having your vehicle loaded with various weapons is the key to victory. And due to how soldiers can improve their skills when fighting with particular weapons you should consider making your own classes. I do it by simply renaming my troops with the role. So they are like Ronald "Sapper" Mcburger since X-Files doesnt have stat strings you can do it yourself.
In general
Rifleman - does rifle stuff, good at short to medium range
Assault - Does the SMG job
Support - Shotguns and smoke cover
Sapper - Battlefield control, to lay mines and to create new doors with dynamite.
Grenadier - Rifleman with grenades
Demolisher - Grenade launcher,
Gunner - Machineguns, Heavy Weapons Operatives you get the idea how these classes work.
Since you see these "nicknames" on the agent overview menu you can easily draft a specific squad.
Do i face monsters ? Then gunners, HWO's and rifleman should be present due to large number of melee enemies
Am i about to raid a cult HQ ? Then sappers, assaults and supports should be present in larger quantity.
Thankfully one of the good things about old XCOM's when compared to XCOM 1 or 2 is that your classes are all made up, nothing stops a sapper from picking a minigun, supports using rifles...
9) It might be better to not research certain things until you know you wont need them.
Like the Final Solution, once you get this research subject, think about it what will it cause. Fighting monsters is a really easy way to train your troops with low risk and a good way to create specialized troops. The alternative is fighting ranger xenos with strong weapons or armed human factions. I think i'll rather be hunting zombos in the woods than dodge heavy plasma fire with rookies.
10) Your starting position matters !
Cults have bases around the world, most vehicles have limited range of operation.
Bad spots
South America - Too far away from Europe and Asia
Africa - No cult starts in Africa
Arctic - Too far away from cults
Good spots
Europe - Somewhat central access to most places of the world, i had my base in Athens, Greece. But will slightly struggle with reaching the US mainland
Asia, Japan - This is a really good spot, you somewhat have of a access to US to get Exalt personal, Red Dawn and Lotus are at your doorstep but Europe is harder.
The starting position in Japan is also essential since you can reach the Red Dawn HQ with larger- capacity vehicle like the Helicopter so its not 4vs+60.
Once you have a hefty income make new bases to cover other continents too. Having a base in Europe and US is suggested so you can launch mission from there too to take out the cults
11) Go for Red Dawn first
Red Dawn is the easiest cult to destroy, they are ex-USSR personal and they dont use psionics or high tech weapons. You also get a essential tech from them. I saw that in the newest patch note that they will have armoured cars outside so thats... abit harder but still easier than other factions. You will need to raid outposts to gather explosives for this then. Some dynamites, maybe a RPG launcher there to take out those cars. You cannot buy these things yet so you will need to loot them from their safe houses.
12) Night missions ?
I would say, NO. Especially against creatures.
BUT, against Humans, then thats different story since they wont see a shit either.
First thing, from top of my head, Dagon cultists have better eye sight in the dark than your troops by default so they will be able to fire at your barely armoured troops out of your line of sight. Some armours make you more stealhy (like XCOM coveralls, but you need a tech from Red Dawn to make them).
13) Skip your turn number 1 when facing ranged enemies while you are in your vehicle
So on turn 2, you wont get riddled with bullets from reaction fire the moment you exit your vehicle
14) Rush for Kitsune once you research it.
Kitsune is a super, one of a kind aircraft you can make. This thing has global range, can carry alot of troops at once, even heavy weapon platforms like tanks and can fight back if you give it some weapons. It also runs on standard aircraft fuel. Not Elerium or Zubrite. It can also fly to space
Protect this ship with your life since you wont get anything even close to speed and carry capacity until later on.
15) Use spare med-packs on civilians that are about to die
If you have spare reserves, you can prevent civilans from dying from bloodloss by just stabilising them like your troops.
16) Fighting alongside AI
Some missions will have more than 1 party involved, police or military will fight against whoever is their enemy and XCOM will be there to help them. So be aware of the fact that AI is dumb as a stump and you might see the military personal accidentally shooting your troops in the back or with your troop reaction fire so try to scatter and get in to positions like next to a wall so these dumbasses wont walk behind them and accidentally shoot them.
17) No reason to stockpile dead bodies once you butchered them up, the blood plasma for the 20 charge medkits is quite later on and you can simply sacrifice some elerium to make it anyway. So sell them for cash. Live captures sell for more.
18) The whole capturing alive thingy
Well it tells you more about the thing and some story lines require live captures but in general what it tells you are details that i havent found that interesting, most things you will hear that this creature is vulnerable to fire. But its not like thats a relevant information if it dies to 2 snap fires from a shotgun or a single volley from a machinegun. And you can guess which enemies wont be easy to kill with guns the moment you see them. Heavy armour ? Better whip out that C4 or RPG, this thing is hundreds of small entities ? Get the flamer ready !.
So TLDR - Dont push yourself over it too much, until X-Files adds more incentive for live captures.
19) Panicking or soon to be MC'ed troops
If you see aliens attempting to mind control your trooper (They only try this if there is a chance for them being able to do it, so if your entire squad is really mentally stabile they wont even bother) you must disarm him to prevent massacres. Drop his inventory and move him somewhere, lock him up in a barn or a house. If he gets MC'ed then he will either wander around aimlessly, trying to pick up his weapons and wasting TU's or he will try to punch your troops which is a really good alternative to an elerium rocket one shotting your entire squad of 14 guys.
If the soldier is loosing it due to low sanity, disarm him too so he wont shoot your own.
20) Disarming and assisted suicide, weapon theft
Once you get your own psiops, if you know your mind control victim wont be killable by the squad, either pull the pin from his grenade and throw it under him so he kills himself or throw his weapon away and drop all of his stuff on the ground.
If you mind control ayys or you would find panicking aliens, steal their weapon to your backpack. I am pretty sure sectoids dont even have a punching attack so once they wake up they will stare at your troops they cant mind control due to high stats and they just stand there, without weapons. So your guy can walk to them and swing his stun rod at them.
21) Get a sectopod or two when possible
They are the best thing since sliced bread
22) Spread out if fighting enemies you know use explosives
Its better for a single guy to die from a plasma hit, rather than 8 dudes from a plasma grenade.
23) Dogs
Dogs are rather underwhelming, they cannot wear sufficient armour to not die from a first plasma weapon that hits them but their teeth will melt enemies extremely quickly, their bark ranged attacks also reduces time units so you can use them to protect your ranged units against charging enemies. So in close quaters they are absolute beasts since their bite does ALOT of damage.
24) Using your tanks as meatshields
Lets face it, once you get access to them you should use them to tank enemy fire. Their high armour makes them invincible to small arms fire and even some energy weapons aint gona even scratch them. Sectopod has such a large armour that the only weapon that can kill it are multiple rocket hits or heavy gauss cannon. Or heavy laser weapons.
Tanks should be enough against human enemies.
In combat, crounch behind your tank to let it soak damage aimed at your soldiers. Its also better to simply lose a tank than a good soldier
25) Which weapons should i put on a tank ?
Laser cannon is by far the best weapon i found. Infinite ammo, good medium range and massive damage (It will one hit KO most humans and creatures).
One thing you need to know is that some melee enemies have such a high damage per hit that they can even destroy your vehicles so still avoid melee combat.
26) Capturing Ayys
Most of the essential research is gated behind commanders and engineers. Live Engineers will give you research for better weapons. Use Mind Reader to check out which Alien is who.
27) Explosive entrance
Sometimes its just better to blast a wall. Tanks can destroy concrete walls with rockets or cannons (Laser too) but high explosives should be used first.
UFO hulls cannot be destroyed with standard explosives but Elerium ex and Elerium Rocket can do it so if you dont feel for charging in, simply open the UFO like a banana with elerium explosive set to 2 turns to explode while you run away with your troops.
28) Make sure to turn on "Advanced Movement" in settings (Advanced tab)
This unlocks strafing and sprint for your troops. Running is essential (Less TU to move but costs more energy). Strafing is less important.
29) Reaction fire requires "Snap Fire" mode or else the weapon cannot fire via reactions
So dont expect to see your troops using miniguns to return fire. This is also kinda why you need to give your dudes either back up weapon (Like pistol they can holster) or a melee weapon. They smack enemies at close range but they wont fire at them.
30) Most enemies will panic
This is a nice touch of realism, in short and in gameplay terms. If you kick their ass so much, you have half of the mission done for you already. The more asskicking you cause in the shortest time span the more chaos it will do to enemy morale. This will become apparent once your weapons and armour gets way better than what enemies can stand a chance against. Even aliens can panic so use them running around to steal their weapons and capturing them with stun weapons. Even animals can go berserk or rattle on the spot but this is rare.
31) Enemies can and will surrender
If they are human/Human-ish, then if you kick their ass hard enough or you massacred most of them on the map. The survivors might surrender to XCOM. I would suggest turning on the automatic battle end in the advanced settings so you dont like spend a turn massacring enemies that have surrendered.
Its sometimes hard to spot if the enemy without weapon has recently panicked or he has surrendered, if he stands still during their turn then he is your captive now and he will go to your funhouse for questioning via research.
One important thing is, if there is even a single robot enemy on the map, enemies wont surrender. So if you face human and robot fighting force. You need to ensure that all robots are destroyed.
32) AI units need abit of aim grinding
AI driven vehicles you can build start with awful accuracy but they can improve by simply hitting stuff and killing them.
33) Always have these items in your landing craft
- Medkits (Self explanatory)
- Explosives or some sort of terrain removal tool. Some melee weapons like Kukri can remove some terrain like folliage while laser or plasma cutters will destroy things like walls. There are certain levels where you must destroy terrain to reach enemies.)
- Flamethrower (Some enemies have massive resistances towards certain damage types, but fire tends to work too well against them)
- Melee weapons ( Great backup weapons, also worthwile if you discover that the map is really closed up so using rocket launchers and miniguns isnt worth it)
- Some backup ranged weapons (Like if you arm your entire team with laser weapons, drop in some rifles and machineguns, you know, in case you encounter an enemy that takes like 50% only damage from laser weapons but gets 120% from bullets)
- Flashlights and flares (Self explanatory)
34) The ultimate mindcontrol
If you want to squeeze as much mind control potential your soldier has then equip him with Stormtrooper armour. There is an advanced version of the amplifier that lets you, just like ayys mind control dudes through obstacles. This amp requires both hands but you can give your soldier a pistol that can be quickly holstered with low TU cost. With Stormtrooper (Or any flying armour) you should simply land him on a rooftop, he should be able to mind control everyone in that building. You can capture small UFO's with this because once you psi-cap a Sectoid you can use him to psi-spot other aliens (Through obstacles) so your psioperative can get em too. Like with 2 psiops you can capture around 6 aliens in one turn, great way to clear out the final rooms of UFO.
Edit1: 04.06.2020 Added more tips (24-29)
Edit2: 08.06.2020 Added more tips (30-32)
Edit3: 13.06.2020 Added more tips (33-34)[/list]
Thanks for the advices! >So by the end of 1997 i have managed to gather some staff components, alo some decent transpostation vehicles and some basic weaponry, but objectives neede to be planned more carefully, UFO interception will come later...anyway i'm very very low on money!! :'(
(https://i.postimg.cc/TK3LbXDT/screen000.png) (https://postimg.cc/TK3LbXDT) (https://i.postimg.cc/PLLC6zyc/screen001.png) (https://postimg.cc/PLLC6zyc) (https://i.postimg.cc/phzpvWgJ/screen002.png) (https://postimg.cc/phzpvWgJ) (https://i.postimg.cc/vxyDZRyF/screen003.png) (https://postimg.cc/vxyDZRyF)
Thanks for the advices! >So by the end of 1997 i have managed to gather some staff components, alo some decent transpostation vehicles and some basic weaponry, but objectives neede to be planned more carefully, UFO interception will come later...anyway i'm very very low on money!! :'(
(https://i.postimg.cc/TK3LbXDT/screen000.png) (https://postimg.cc/TK3LbXDT) (https://i.postimg.cc/PLLC6zyc/screen001.png) (https://postimg.cc/PLLC6zyc) (https://i.postimg.cc/phzpvWgJ/screen002.png) (https://postimg.cc/phzpvWgJ) (https://i.postimg.cc/vxyDZRyF/screen003.png) (https://postimg.cc/vxyDZRyF)
Have you sold any excess dead bodies and cultists ? Because if you have like 40 corpses of some monster, then thats some nice cash there, sell excess weapons there, bones, phones, access cards and you should scramble enough money to get something like Firefly (Though you need contact to UAC to get it)
Another good idea is to simply sell off all irrelevant weapons. As cool as it is to have lugers and Mossin Nagans in your stock. Once you get access to the Blackops Industry, all those WW1,WW2 and Cold War weapons are obsolete. And the performance jump is considerable. Cult raids are also a good way to get captives (Which you can sell if you dont want dossiers for council ratings) and also just plain out cash. Recieving Promotion also increases your paycheck.
Part 2 of my tips
35) Learn weapon silluetes, or atleast this one.
(https://i.imgur.com/cPhtnZo.png)
This is heavy plasma.
(https://i.imgur.com/6GsQk7P.png)
This thing will one hit KO most of your units in most cases and it has really large damage output, pretty much only tanks, sectopods and juggernaut power armour users can even think about surviving a single hit. This will be the thing massacring most of your troops and you will encounter it alot.
36) Damage and armour numbers
This is really important to remember so you know if your soldiers can take a hit from the enemy or not.
Lets look at heavy tactical suit
(https://i.imgur.com/QykFkSI.png?1)
Due to how armour works in old XCOM's compared to XCOM 1 and 2, if weapon cannot hurt you, it wont. It wont cause chip damage.
You also need to know that weapons have a RNG damage spread. So weapons always do more or less damage than is written in ufopedia
Tactical suit will be the first armour where you will see constant bullet reflections and 0 damage taken. Cult missions will become extremely easy with this.
It has 32 frontal armour, so a weapon that does 32 or less damage per hit wont do any damage (No matter the type) unless it rolls for higher damage. But it also has 65% kinetic resistance so the actual treshold for bullet damage is higher. You can safely say that only sniper rifles, rocket launchers and armour piercing weapons like cannons can punch through. Pistols, smg's and shotguns wont even dent this thing.
37) Quickdraw and belt slots on the inventory requires the smallest TU to draw from.
Backpack has alot of space, but taking stuff from it takes more TU than from belt or quickdraw. Quickdraw is perfect for pistols, clips or melee weapons. As it leaves you with enough TU to shoot, or reload and then shoot.
38) Sanity
While for most of the game, if you dont take too long to finish a map. You shouldnt have a problem. But in case of low sanity but your troops are still needed. There are ciggies (Golden Dragons) or combat drugs (Nobelons) you can give to your troops to boost their sanity. But this takes a toll on their health so use this only in emergency. Low sanity degrades combat stats and makes them more vulnerable to panic, you dont want that when facing aliens who can one shot your troops from behind.
39) Stay a while...and listen
Do you hear doors slamming , UFO doors opening ? The wooden door slamming means that there is alien outside somewhere....
40) Mechanical units are repaired instantly when you return from a base.
Since tanks and drones arent living being, repairs are done by XCOM mechanics extremely quickly. So even if you bring home a tank with 10 HP remaining, mechanics will weld it back together within hours. This really means that you should use your tanks as cannon fodder since they are reusable.
41) Alot of armours and vehicles can be repaired in workshop if you lose them in combat.
Most high-end armors and vehicles if destroyed/soldier is slain in it will leave a broken wreck of whatever remains. You can, for a small fee repair them to fully functional state in the workshop.
42) Force fire
In case you dont know, if you hold CTRL before you order an attack. The soldier will shoot, even if there is something (or someone) in the way. This is useful if you are shooting at somebody in cover under the idea that your weapon will destroy the cover. Furniture can be destroyed with most firearms, trees and stumps can be blown away with high caliber weapons and walls, doors and sturdier stuff can be destroyed with lasers or plasma weapons (depending on damage output). This is useful for full auto since it tends to be slightly more effective with time units than trying to use snapshot.
43) Miniguns
While miniguns may look crap, they are not. You might be put off when you see that your attacks have like 15-25% chance to hit but few things to consider
A) Miniguns fire in large volleys
B) They only take 5% armour damage reduction. So they pretty much ignore armour up to the heaviest foes.
C) To put it bluntly, in this XCOM, you can miss +100% hits, but you will also hit low chance hits more often that you would expect. Especially miniguns seems to make it the most noticable when you mow down 4 dudes on the other side of the map Minigun is, despite being a large weapon god-tier close range weapons if you shoot it one title away at enemy since you will hit and it will hurt alot. Majority of the game's enemies will die in one volley, only the toughest and largest can think of walking it off. The blackops minigun for example does 35 damage a bullet, multiplied by 15. So thats 525 damage if all bullets hit. (But it will be more or less due to damage scattering).
44) Orange, stationary dots
At some point you will encounter them. Intel says its large and at 0 speed. This "UFO" wont lift off and you can assault it with no problem.
Though, if you do, depending your tech level, prepare for one of the hardest fight in the game.
Why ?
Well this isnt UFO, but rather MiB base. Once you will go down the assault ramp you will be assaulted by rocket launchers, psionics, tanks, Sectopods, laser weapons, plasma grenades and accelerator weapons. Well thats quite alot so lets go through that all
Well if you havent fought flying enemies before, then you will encounter them here. Men in Black stormtroopers will hover around the map, often armed with rocket launchers. Make sure to get their corpse in one piece since you can use it for your troops.
Since Men in Black are Ayy helpers they will be armed with plasma grenades
Tanks ? Yes, MiB will deploy 0-3 tanks around their base. They are the same as XCOM's laser tanks. So that means they will one shot most of your dudes and will easily wreck your own tanks.
Sectopods are just a cherry on top, also MiB version of it. Prepare for absolute hell if one of them just stomps out of a garrage and one shots your tank and 2 other guys. Use rocket launchers or miniguns to attack their backs where their armour is the weakest.
Psionics, base can have a psi-trooper who even has a shield.
Accelerator weapons are step up from blackops weapons you been using. They do more damage. Sucks to not have the heaviest armour to tank it. And most of the enemy here will be armed with Blackops weapons or Human-grade laser weapons so unless you have heavy tritanium tactical armour for your whole squad. Dont even bother.
MiB troops are quite tough (endurance wise) but the powerarmour operative takes the cake. These bulky guys in black have one of the best armours in the game (Only Juggernaut power armour is better) and after you will see them eat laser tank blasts one after other you might panic. But if you do kill one of them with explosives or hits from behind you can retrofit the armour for XCOM.
You might see enemy dogs around the base, though they are nothing when compared to the Human troops you face.
And then comes the base itself. The welcoming party is quite something already but you might find the base daunting too. Especially if you discover that the basement has a tank like doing circles in the hallways. Its also made as a maze but i said fuck that and i use explosives to make my path. And then the final room with more enemies (usually the commander and some guards).
You do get alot of loot from this and alot of ratings for the council. Also btw, dont really bother that much with live captures because at this moment, you cannot permamently destroy MiB.
45) Speaking of curve balls the mod can throw at you, here some more
"Clinic raid"
At some point you will encounter these clinics, if you done hybrid convoys then you will be familiar with the enemies you can encounter there. This is absolue save scum fest because even leaving your assault ramp will be difficult as you are attacked by a large number of hybrids and Advent agents armed with plasma grenades and laser weapons. This one is absolute hell because plasma grenades will be landing between your troops and constant laser fire aint gona make things easy. Having a tank helps alot since they can atleast take hits from laser weapons but plasma grenades will destroy them in few hits. Then the clinic itself, once you like killed 20 dudes outside you can enter it and mop it up, prepare for short range blasts from chemlaunchers and chemrifles while hybrids are trying to mind rape your troops. Though this mission gives very good loot since you can reuse laser rifles, heavy lasers for your troops and you get a really large council rating from this due to the number or enemies killed and loot gained
"Early visitors"
Even before 1999, you can, on rare ocassions get a landed UFO, if you can manage to capture it then you will get a massive leg up on the tech race. There is a rarer variation of this that military managed to down it. This mission is hard because you can only bring 2-4-6 guys and you have no clue about their psionic power so its roll of a dice. Though sectoids arent exactly tanky so shotguns should suffice.
Hunting party
Another early game alien mission. You will encounter Anthropods here, armed with warp weapons. If you can kill them all, you can get alien biochemistry tech which unlocks the dart rifle, which is chemical based non lethal weapon.
Arctic Horrors
This is one of a time mission, have you seen the Thing (movie) ? Well, this mission alone justifies the paranoid flamethrower in your car. You will get a autopsy from the metamorph and that autopsy gives massive council rating boost, pretty much so much you can do nothing for the rest of the month and still get positive opinion from them. Whats so hard ? Well Metamorphs are tanky and they will turn any victim to one of them and ofc there are civilians on the map, a good warmup for Chrysallids. While they can be shot to pieces with shotguns, it will take alot of buckshots so its better to one tap them with flamethrower.
Your first cult HQ
It will be a massacre, but victory means promotion for XCOM. Red Dawn is the easiest to do when compared to Exalt, Dagon and Lotus. Exalt is well armed, Dagon has psionics and really shitty HQ map with little cover and Lotus has ninja who are invisible unless you are close enough to them, that paired up with your shitty armour means you will lose soldiers
HQ of the other organisation
Syndicate HQ is one of the most brutal faction HQ's. For the simple reason that your troops will need to psi-disguise as Syndicate personal and that means you will lose your armour, at the point when you face Syndicate i assume you will have Cyber armour and maybe few powerarmour pieces stolen from MiB. And this close range fight will be a bloodbath, a rocket tag gameplay as both sides will be in the range of one or two shotting each other with the weapons you have. And theres what, like 50-70 enemies in that base ? And aside from supersoldiers, soldiers, minotaurs and CEO's you can also find the security mech. I think it took me 3 hours to do it with save scumming because those casulties were relentless and those were my best troops i had.
X Ship
This mission is brutal, +70 enemies on open place. What i am talking about ? About the Cyberweb ship HQ in X Dimension, this mission will be bordeline unplayable without Sectopods and tanks because you cannot bring your Tritanium or Cyber armour here because the atmosphere is unbreatheable so you need enviroment suits which DONT protect against lasers and warp attacks. So tanks and Sectopods will need to soak fire from +20 enemies at once. I did it with sectopods with no problem but not sure about tanks having same results.
46) Kitsune, Osprey and Ironfist have unique advantages over other landing vehicles
Ironfist is heavy infantry transport with staircase, so its possible to shoot explosives through that to the outside.
Kitsune though takes the cake because you can walk under it. This means you are protected against grenades and other explosives thrown in arc. Osprey has this too.
Skymarshall also is slightly better at dealing with landing zone ambushes because it has side doors you can camp or use to scatter your troops.
47) Training your troops
At some point you will realize that you have a bunch of really good guys and gals but the ever looming threat of losing them is ever present. But the rest of your units are quite crap. Like 30-40% chance to hit someone standing in front of them with something like Blackops rifle. To prevent disasters you need to constantly train new units with "Milk runs". Missions against monsters are a really good way of training firing accuracy because they are melee (most of the time atleast) so its just you taking potshots at them from safe distance.
This is also why you should reconsider researching The Final Solution, as that will over time eradicate creature missions, forcing you either to train your rookies against Aliens or high-end Human factions
To add some safety, you should spice up the rookie squad with few elite troops acting as sergeants, just in case...
Creatures will be a good way to grind up aim and throwing accuracy, cultists will be a great practise with melee weapons because you can actually survive melee attacks from them.
Training should be done either with Blackops weapons (Cheap and effective) or turbolaser weapons (Infinite ammo). Once you have access to Stormtrooper armour (Or any flying one) creature missions will become impossible to lose.
Dont forget to have the gym occupied, making 2 gyms so you can have 20 agents (And dogs) training at the same time can help and you can demolish them once their training is complete. Also check out possible upgrades for your troops so they have the best stats possible.
48) Enemy/Allies will pick up weapons if they lost them for any reason.
They will either try to pick up their own weapon but they can grab anything on the ground. Civilians will pick up weapons off the ground too. If you want to save as many civilians as possible, you can, pack up a backpack with weapons you will drop in a city so civilians can pick them up and shoot. Oh and civilians will pick up stuff from the pile in XCOM's craft if they wander in it. I saw a woman picking up a rocket launcher and walking out of my Kitsune to one shot 3 cultists across the street. Or a engineer who walked to Kitsune and walked back out with Blackops SMG in hand. Not sure if there are any preferences or random. Not enough data to make any claim yet.
49) Sectopods
Sectopods have the highest armour in the game. So much so that if you get one, he can pretty much solo Alien base missions because not even heavy plasma can even touch his health pool. The only thing that can destroy him are heavy gauss cannons or flank shots from strong laser weapons. One way to quickly destroy a sectopod are Laser tanks, because laser does whooping 120 damage a hit, you can destroy a sectopod from behind in one burst fire.
And yes, once you get a wreck, you can rebuild it and slot your AI to it. Game will become extremely easy.
50) Some robotic enemies will explode when killed, destroying their loot/corpse.
Certain robotic enemies will self destruct when shot to pieces. Most notable are cyberdisks who will happily take out all of its comrades that are standing nearby.
But, if you destroy them with explosives, it will drop a wreck instead.
51) You can toss weapons, bodies and items across distances.
Well how is that even useful you might say ? Its very specific
- You can reinforce your men with supplies at different elevation's quickly, iek Marius, throw that magazine at me
(https://i.imgur.com/Gk0WXPH.png)
- You can throw away confiscated weapons somewhere inaccessible, like when you are fighting sectoids you can either stuff their weapons to your backback or just toss them on the top of the UFO or top of the tree
So its abit specific and gimmicky way to skip some TU's steps
52) MAGMA Corporation quests
You will meet this corporation one way or the other and they can provide XCOM some of the harder hitting weapons in the game and cool gadgets in general. Though some live captures and particular items researched are a needed for these "quests" to spawn. These missions are, once you research the outcome of the mission, one of a time. But they are bitch hard and require good gear and manpower to pull off.
The first mission you can get is by researching live infestor (And the 2 lesser variants) you can catch one in major infestations. This will spawn mission at some point. Dont bother with this mission unless you can haul atleast 8 dudes here armed with miniguns and shotguns and atleast armoured vest /w vest with a shield. This mission gives 2 rewards, tactical implants and heavy shotgun. The tactical implant is the important thing here.
This is a producable item that can be used to upgrade your troops (Sort of like bio upgrades) but most importantly it lets you build Cyber Armour, which is pretty much an upgrade of Tritanium Suit which has no penalties to movement and gives a slight boost to reaction fire at cost of being only slightly worse at stopping bullets (by 5%) and this armour will be probably the longest used across the game because its just good. Before you whip out power armours for everyone. Your entire squads will be composed of Cyber Armour troops. Oh and also Cyber armour only takes 80% plasma damage (Tritanium suit takes full 100%).
I guess it makes you technically right in that actual kills get you noticed
Yes, by regular AI visibility. It's used in regular AI behavour. Sniper-spotter visibility is different. It has only 2 triggers - when spotter sees you directly, and on direct projectile hits (https://github.com/MeridianOXC/OpenXcom/blob/884aef982b68261014ae0225661f0ce47268e459/src/Battlescape/ProjectileFlyBState.cpp#L1026), including, say, rockets, but not not their AOE. And not end-of-turn activated grenades. When player character is snipper-spotter visible, units with "sniper" value defined in the ruleset have chance (equal to the value) to attack the character. That's basically all you need to know.
We were talking about detection on hit more than kill.
Who are "we"? "Are these people in the room with us"?
I wrote specifically about kills and then you jump out with "nuh-uh" to me, and I'm replying to you.
What matters in for gameplay strategy (what this thread is about) is whether your agents get spotted, not whether they actually killed someone in the process of getting spotted.
It matters whether sitting in smoke chucking grenades is completely foolproof strategy. It's not, even when executed perfectly, due to said kills affecting visibility. But it's still darn effective strategy.
Well, I suppose sometimes the grenade hits the enemy and gets you spotted, then.
This never happens. There's no such thing as "direct grenade hit" (i.e. it doesn't hit unit, explode and deal damage), unless that's grenade from a launcher - i.e. effectively a rocket.
Is more complicated
It's really not unless you're making it out to be. Corner cases don't affect main strategy being "Not in 6-sided cover? Guess I'll die."
You wrote about kills in a thread discussion about spotting in general, and now want to hide behind 'but technically I'm right!"
No. You failed to properly read 2 sentences that I wrote about thing X and now hiding behind "b-but were talking about thing Y".
It matters whether sitting in smoke chucking grenades is completely foolproof strategy. It's not, even when executed perfectly, due to said kills affecting visibility.
Or whether the enemy is inside a building you can't throw grenades into, or you're in some caves where throwing is severely limited, or there are some Sectopods around negating most of your smoke's effectiveness, or...
Or it actually works because your grenade was a stun grenade and thus not a kill. Or an incendiary and the kill got attributed to 'burning' and thus you may get spotted a turn later when the victim dies, or never if someone else shot the burning fella in the meantime.
In any case, 'seen' visibility hasn't been the problem here, so while valid, this is not a particularly topical criticism of the "smoke&nade" strategy.
This never happens. There's no such thing as "direct grenade hit"...
In that case I don't know how I got some incendiary kills to get me spotted for snipers. Maybe I was not quite as isolated from sight as I thought, maybe I misread the files, maybe some other issue. And if I don't get it in a somewhat controlled experiment, an actual mission is going to be a lot harder to decipher.
It's really not unless you're making it out to be.
So, can you predict with at least 95% accuracy whether a grenade toss will get you spotted, seen, both or neither; in one turn or several? The only consistent thing seems to be that you won't get sniper-spotted by the victim unless something else is going on, and will get snipered if you shoot and hit a spotter.
You failed to properly read 2 sentences that I wrote about thing X and now hiding behind "b-but were talking about thing Y".
Ah, the classic "No, U!" defense.
There are some cases in which the protection of smoke is inadequate. Juku already mentioned some, for example, enemies with heat vision.
Smoke still works most of the time, as heat vision is not end-all for smoke tactics.
Dog-level heat vision is not particularly effective, is it? And that's what most enemies with heat vision have. Whereas you can roll with rats, scout drones, or even bats. Sectopods completely disregard smoke, but their posse usually don't.
Psi-sense isn't end-all either. Sectoids are easily fooled with smoke. Ethereals - not so much (works over really long, 20+ tiles, distances).
The real kryptonite to `smoke + distance` defence are AOE attacks. 50% accuracy debuff is not enough to protect you against EXALT grenadiers.
In many missions there are buildings at least 3 levels high. I think in some cases (e.g. a building is close enough) enemies could see your guys over the smoke.
I tested with debug mode how far away RD pioneer sees my armored vest guy in mortar shell smoke, after it diffused for a couple turns, at daytime.
On ground (height 0), he's seen from 4 tiles away from East: XxxxxR
At height 1 : same, 4 tiles. At height 2: 6 tiles. H3 : 6, H4: 8, H5: 9, H6: 10 ... H10: ~14.
So yes, height allows to see units a bit farther through smoke. But it depends how exactly did the smoke diffuse - in some cases, like close to walls, I wasn't able to get viewing distance less than 8 tiles at H10, compared to 14 of previous example. And in some cases viewing target from the north instead of east/etc., adds/subtracts 1-2 tiles of visibility.
I didn't test the reverse visibility though - will the x-com guy on the ground see floating enemy farther away?
In practice, however, manor attacks were the only case for me when it felt like building height was the issue - I wasn't ever able to "safely" sit in smoke there, always being swarmed with enemies. Floaters did surprise me a couple of times, but were quickly dealt with. Something like 3-tile high lab ships were never a problem.
Or an incendiary and the kill got attributed to 'burning' and thus you may get spotted a turn later when the victim dies, or never if someone else shot the burning fella in the meantime.
Incendiary has 3 damage components to it - basic explosion, fire status effect, and terrain damage, so I guess terrain kill attribution can happen. However, when I can't afford risks, to be on safe side, I would always just assume that it was my guy who it was attributed to. Same with all your so-called 'deciphering'. That's why it's quite simple matter.
In any case, 'seen' visibility hasn't been the problem here, so while valid, this is not a particularly topical criticism of the "smoke&nade" strategy.
And if I don't get it in a somewhat controlled experiment, an actual mission is going to be a lot harder to decipher.
...Shoulda tried actual mission?
In that case I don't know how I got some incendiary kills to get me spotted for snipers. Maybe I was not quite as isolated from sight as I thought, maybe I misread the files, maybe some other issue.
One of these, yes.
Smoke still works most of the time, as heat vision is not end-all for smoke tactics.
The problem with low-level heat vision is not that it renders smoke useless, it's that it throws off any smoke calculations you might have become accustomed to while fighting against enemies without HV. So you'll be making more mistakes and you're going to need more smoke, and more smoke means an opportunity cost because throwing/launching smoke is not free.
Sectoids are easily fooled with smoke. Ethereals - not so much (works over really long, 20+ tiles, distances).
Sectoid leadership got a boost recently, to exactly 20 tiles. And the danger with Sectoids is that it is far easier to miscalculate, especially when there are walls and buildings nearby. 20 tiles is not an inconsiderable distance, it can easily be on the other side of the hill or something.
Anyway, yes, smoke still works against heat vision. But it works less well, and isn't the kind of foolproof tactic it used to be.
The real kryptonite to `smoke + distance` defence are AOE attacks. 50% accuracy debuff is not enough to protect you against EXALT grenadiers.
That, and snipers in general. If they shoot you 50 times, it doesn't matter that their chance to hit is 2 not-percent. That's what resurrected this whole discussion in the first place.
I would always just assume that it was my guy who it was attributed to. Same with all your so-called 'deciphering'. That's why it's quite simple matter.
Anything looks simple after oversimplifying.
Shoulda tried actual mission?
What for?