- Jumpsuit and Grav Module now have color variations (aesthetic only).
I was thinking about it when i saw in UFO pedia that these armours have camo-versions which look way cooler than the stock grey-ish XCOM color. That being said, what i would like to see instead are colour/camo works for armours you have the longest in the game. Tritanium armour, Cyber armour, Power armour and the Juggernaut. While Tritanium and Cyber armour looks badass enough. The Power armour could use a paint job so its not this grey-ish thing and the juggernaut armour so its not this ugly yellow plastic thing that looks like a toy.
But i guess such thing isnt important to do when compared to finishing other stuff like factions and their arcs... But anyway, great work.
I agree with the user above. I always lose equipment in that mission because some culty either shoots a rocket in my craft (generally as a reaction when I step down the craft) or a tosses a grenade. It is probably it.
Hmmph, yes that might be the cause since one of my dudes who was under Kitsune got hit by 2 rockets but since he was wearing power armour he took no damage. So it seems the same couldnt be said for a dropship floor...
Finally got armored vests. Also grenades, and other explosives. Things are heating up. I have to say, I LOVE the shield addon for the armored vest. Only heavy weapons, or explosives effect you, and while being limited to 1 hand hurts, it seems to work great with a Magnum heavy pistol. Its not quite invulnerability, but it is quite an improvement.
Armoured vest and its alien alloy variant will be your first armour that will bounce off bullets from low caliber weapons somewhat consistently and will be a godsend against cultists. The shielded variant has bonus armour and you can also bash with the shield for pure stun damage (0,8 * Strenght) so you dont need a stunweapon and you can stick to pistols. Magnum is a good pick for its decent accuracy and punch but its not the best you can have for your shield bearer, most pistols do 30 damage a hit, Magnum does 38 damage but has only 6 round drum. Normal, larger capacity pistol might be enough. Blackops pistol does 30 damage a hit and has 12 rounds (And is slightly cheaper to fire). Mk23 SOCOM does the same damage but has 10 round clip.
So you decide if you want longer lasting, more rapid fire shorter range pistol or more individual damage per hit at longer range. Shield does let you actually get closer to enemies. Or you can simply give your guy a SMG, some of them can be fired with a single hand for maximum short range damage output.
Also, dont forget that your guys can meat shield other agents so your shield bearers can be turn in to portable cover so if for example you are expecting that an enemy will try to flank and shoot at one of your troops from behind (which would penetrate his armour) you can relocate him to him, have him face the direction of the attacker so any attack made against the flanked soldier will hit the shield bearer instead.
Some enemies have better sight than XCOM troops. Especially non-humans or mutated humans. Even baseline Dagon cultists have slightly better nightvision than XCOM.
One thing that could be causing the sudden spotting is if there are any light sources on the map, lamposts, burning bodies.... Or you are being seen by a one guy and he is working as a spotter for the rest of the cultists so your agent is being shot at from guys who work off informations given to them by the sole person that actually sees you.
Also, dont be decieved if the map is dark or not. As long as there is a picture of a moon when you arrive at the LZ, then its a night mission. Why am i mentioning this ? Because you can arrive at early in the morning, dont get the moon symbol and the map is dark af but it counts as a day mission anyway so your troops have full sight even if game doesnt look like it.
I heard that you can get vampire knights from some posts but only recently i actually got it too. It was an instant retreat because i know damm well that they were troublesome enemies when i faced them in their "debute" mission and i was swinging around heavy gauss cannons and laser miniguns and 2 sectopods.
Flying armour would make it very easy, too bad its way, way high up in the tech tree but here is a way to get a good flying armour with lesser tech requirements. The earliest i manage to get it was during my transition between Tritanium suits and Cyber armour
Spoiler:
MiB bases can spawn Stormtroopers, they have a end-game flying armour, if you swat him out of the sky you can retrofit his armour for XCOM via workshop, you can also get powerarmours early this way. This stormtrooper armour is JUST GOOD and Powerarmour gives your dude the ability to tank alot of damage and be almost untouchable by standard firearms. +20 accuracy, +20 reaction, no penalties to anything, flying, good sight in darkness and 80 point of frontal armour (Which means human weapons wont even dent this armour)
You can sell live capture humans. Admittedly this is true for aliens in vanilla, but I have to wonder, WHO are you selling these to. And while I'm at it, what is up with the 10k disposal fee for civilian corpses?
Mudranger. Is there an actual use-case for this? My guess is that you would put them on bases inside a cluster of cities, in hopes that attacks snap to said cities. Obviously the larger capacity would be helpful in such a case. But, what is up with the tiny radius? I mean, can't you shove a few barrels of oil into the thing and refuel it on the way, if you can't just use a gas station? What is the justification gameplay or lorewise?
Killing downed Enemies. Is there an easy way to execute downed enemies? Obviously I don't have reliable explosives yet. Like stab them with a knife or shoot them or something.
Rifle Bash. Is there a reason that only flashlights have a melee option?
Ufopedia, in battle. If you middle-mouse button on an enemy, and middlemouse button on their portrait, it shows data. That said, there isn't everything. It only shows, I think, their armor. Not their stats, or description, nor is there a link to it. I suppose it might require more research?
You are probably ransoming the captured victims
One thing to mention is that agents are capable of melee reactions if they are close enough or without ammo. Weapon needs to have a snapshot to react-fire but if you have something like a minigun and someone tries to walk past your miniguner, the dude will cave his skull in with the shere bulk of his weapon. Though smacking people and things isnt as effective as stabing a tritanium knife through their skull and this is rather a nice way to clear out UFO's by simply waiting behind a corner with a melee weapon. XCOM Files has a feature that if two targets are next to each other they will try to push each other's weapons away so they dont get hit at point blank. This is a battle of stats but it could be safely said that your troops will be the one constantly pushing sectoid's weapons away before they strike at the alien in melee, either with the weapon's stock or with fists.
Another thing is that armour dictates hand to hand damage, a smack from a guy in the suit vs a guy in power armour is the difference between doing minimal damage and killing the sectoid in 2-3 hits.
I am not 100% sure about this, but I think you can take agents on missions and still train them in the gym at the same time. The gym only checks, if an agent is assigned at the end of each day. Having an agent assigned to the gym does not prevent assignment to a craft and vice-versa. Only healing time can interrupt training. So you don't have to constantly shuffle around your dudes between the gym and the transport craft.
You can pull them to missions even if they are training but i mentioned it due to the fact that the 10 guys will be training while i am training 2-4-6-whatever guys by going to missions with them. So in fact i am training 16 guys at once, just 6 of them from missions while rest are training.
Alot of stuff can actually cause stun damage, you can look at weapons in ufo pedia which generates stun.
Hitting someone with a sledge hammer can stun, but you are also most likely smashing his brain out of its skull.
Batton does exist but for some reason XCOM doesnt start with it. But electric baton seems to be a better way to subdue something like a giant spider than trying to mash it with a stick, because if its alive, then electricity will do something to it.
Not sure about the vest but the standard one should increase the capacity
Tracking works by showing nearest entities that have recently moved, you should use it at the start of the round. However this and motion scanners are things i have never used in any useful way.
Gym works this way. If you go to your agents list (from base menu) there will be a sorting option but if you bring it up you will see more than that. You will see possible trainings or upgrades there and you can assign or upgrade your dudes. Gym can hold up to 10 agents at once which will train anytime they are at the base. Training permamently increases their stats to a certain level. Eventually, more features will be added. For example Bioupgrades or Tactical implant instalation. These are permament stat upgrades for a fee, you will unlock these as you progress and there is alot of this so by the end of the game, your troops will be abnormally strong, fast and durable. Though these upgrades usually have requirements (In short, your agents need to be able to survive it so they need some training beforehand)
How you use Gym in practise is to slap 10 dudes there all the time (Or 20 if you make 2 gyms) while you use the guys not assigned in gym to train them in missions. So when you reach the point where you can field more than 6 guys, you will have reserves of atleast average troops. Not sure about exact numbers and timers of improvement so i wont comment about it.
About chemwar suits.... yes you cannot know what you are against so unless you want to abort the mission everytime you fail then i would suggest ignoring this type of armour and just rolling for the most universally strong armours you have. Froggies have short range and their attacks are rarely lethal and your guys can wake up on their own so its possible to do their missions but you need to have long range capabilities or better yet just evac and fight somewhere else. Once you will get Tanks they will make this enemy absolutely irrelevant because tanks have too high armour to be damaged by their attack. Hazmat suits have a sidegrade variation called Bio-Exo suit which has alot of protections geared towards creatures in particular so it gives protection against creature-source damage like slashing so they become more versatile but i still prefer Coveralls against creatures due to mobility bonuses and here is another important thing, Creatures will one or two shot your dudes anyway (if they hit), unless you start running around in something like a powerarmour, then the best defence against creatures is to maintain distance (or flight once you can) While this exobio suit will protect you from rats and beetles it wont protect you against things like werewolves who have enough damage to even damage a tank and will most likely one hit KO your guys from full health.
So the chemsuit is only useful if you know you will face long range chem-based enemies and there is a mission type where its most likely useful called "Exobiological Contamination" if you see this mission, get everyone in chemsuits for this one and pray for the best.
I am not sure about research time but yes, you need to put someone on it to give you an estimate time of finishing. And yes the more people you assign the faster it will finish.
2H weapons are usually well things you would use with two hands IRL, rifles, rocket launchers, sledgehammers but if you are not sure then you can check it out in the UFO-Pedia which will tell you if the weapon has 2H penalty.
Nope, duel wielding is possible with ranged and melee as long as the weapon doesnt have a penalty (ufopedia)
Aimed mode tends to ignore or be more tolerant towards the distance falloff, in UFO pedia you can see the maximum range before the average shot will start falling off in accuracy
One thing i actually learned is to remember misisons by their music, because missions have only 1 track assigned for it you can easily memorize them and know what you are up against. Day or Night will show up before you launch the mission, if its night (if your craft arrives and its night on the geoscape) then there will be a moon in the mission launch screen before you get to your gear.
Yes, Backpacks are tied to armours, most stronger armours have it but flying armour doesnt due to the space being occupied by a jetpack.
Can someone tell me why Dr. Hadriex is in the list of X-Com's Friends on The Council ? He was missing and is hostile towards X-Com upon discovery.
When a bunch of MiB or WH40k guardsmen lookalike's board a ship with a helicoter or some military dropship and start shooting everyone (including ghosts). Then i am pretty sure them being XCOM troops is the least likely explanation. They could be the actual Mib, Exalt, Syndicate or some SpecOps from NATO or PRC who all spell trouble for the murderous doctor.
Part 3 of my tips (Yes i hit the 20 000 character limit again)
53) Synth-Muscle Suit is great for new troops This is a armour you can make by extracting muton corpses. This armour turns your troops in to superhumans by giving them large bonuses to time units, strenght and melee accuracy. Normally you would want coveralls for your new troops when hunting monsters but this thing replaces it by a long shot. Even new troops will be able to fight at close range with good hit chance and if you give them something like a Tritanium sword they will kill most enemies in the game in one or two slices. This is a perfect armour for melee combat and it provides good enough protection from damage though its not exactly bullet proof. But it should stop low caliber weapons.
Once you will get underground missions, it is actually a good idea to give everyone synthsuits and turn them to samurai warriors because its not like you will shoot that much and you will one or two shot anything with reaction fire anyway.
Synth suit gives +20% melee accuracy, this turns even the biggest noobs you have in to having 50-70% chance to hit and that hit will hurt alot. One of the drawbacks of melee is that if you do fail to kill them (Iek missing 5, 40% attacks in row) you just better save scum because what happens after that isnt nice. With +60% chance to hit, even if one hit lands it might kill the enemy on the spot. And once you will get really good melee troops you will be able to mow down people way more quickly than any firearm in the game. Lets do some math to see actual numbers Tritanium sword will be your to go to weapon you can mass produce, katana's and eventually energy melee weapons are also good candidates. But lets look at the sword alone. Base line damage is 50 cutting, + 0.6 * Strenght + 0.2 Accuracy
Lets look at mr. Gerrit, who has 80 strenght and 86 melee accuracy 50 + 48 (0.6 * 80) + 17 (0.2 * 86) = 115 damage a hit. Thats almost as much as rocket blast of cutting damage (Cutting in general is anti-armour, not many armour types protect from it) At cost of 12 TU a slice, Gerrit has 89 TU's, that means 7 possible stabbs, if all hit (86% to hit), then Gerrit can produce 805 points od damage in one turn. Gerrit is also a scrub (4 months in service), but synthmuscle armour turned him in to a terminator
54) Melee weapons have flat TU costs, firearms and other items have percentage based TU costs. TLDR you can do alot of stabs with melee weapons with high TU soldiers.
55) Floater autopsy gives you the option to extract grav modules from them. Unlike other autopsies which are generally useless (Shoot them till they die, autopsies in nutshell, also this x creature is vulnerable to flamethrowers is also quite common) this autopsy gives you access to flying suits which you will want. I can assure you. Though before you can make armoured (And i mean really armoured versions) that will take some time too.
56) Research captured ayy Engineers and Leaders last Given the shitty in my opinion way of aquisition of essential end game tech (iek anti matter contaiment, delta radiation) which is a giant RNG rullete. Let me explain, as you capture enemy aliens, you can capture different types of them, you can capture Engineers, Navigators, Soldiers, Medics, Commanders/Leaders and some elite variants. By slapping them on a chair and screaming at them for multiple hours and days you can extract RNG based reward from them.
Soldiers have few reward options so you can start selling them to the council's own funhouses once you cannot question them furthermore. Medics give you random creature autopsy, so you can know that this creature dies when you shoot it with shotgun at point blank, or that its vulnerable to fire. You can also get autopsies of enemies you havent seen yet. If short on change, Medics follow soldiers to the workshop of information and joy.
Navigators give you intel on Alien ship types. This isnt as useful till you get hyperwave decoding tech which is a late game tech and even then its not that useful to know that. That that UFO over there is Harvester. The only thing you have to look for are "Terror Ships" and Troop transports and you dont need to know from navigators what these ships do. You know that if you dont shoot them down you are facing a possible Alien Terror mission... or XCOM base defence.
Engineers and Leaders/Commanders give the best rewards for XCOM, mostly essential tech you must have to advance. But they can roll for other stuff, stuff like ship types or enemy types. This is a total waste of a capture. So to maximise the chance to roll for useful tech, integoriate as many non engineers/leaders as you can before you start the questioning of them. So you eliminate the trashy rolls as low as possible.
Rather than this meta gaming for essential-to-progress tech i rather be raiding alien bases for data banks, or other major cults/faction HQ's but i have doubts this will change. Alien data slates are also a way to get good tech but these are very rare.
Note: Use mind reader to check out which sectoid is which, other alien types (well most of the time) have visually distinct roles, sectoids look all the same
57) Its irrelevant if you cannot cram a HWP through tiny corridors in 2 phase missions. Sometimes you will be in a mission which is 2 staged and its in something like the caves. You might be tempted to simply get 4 or 8 dudes instead of 1-2 HWP's but consider this, if you kill everything on the map, your squad will proceed, with HWP's. Not sure how did they manage to cram a sectopod through 1 title thin passage through multiple staircases but i guess XCOM called for a magician and he made these 2 planks of tritanium go *puff* and then he summoned them at the destination. Or they dismantled them and constructed them over there.
Just saying that some 2 stage missions can be brutal without something to tank the enemies on the other side. One mission against doomsday preppers made me really happy that i did bring those tanks to the caves since now they were tanking quite damaging attacks that would quickly kill my troops even in tritanium armour.
58) Have soldiers walk in two pairs most of the time. While grouping up can bait explosive attacks, there are benefits in massed combat at some point you will have armours strong enough to survive explosives just fine. By the time you get tritanium suits frag grenades shouldnt even dent your dudes. One soldier can always crouch and the other can fire over his soldier but actually why you would want for them to travel in pairs is simple:
A) So they can medkit each other (Healing spray and gell can self medicate, but the large medkit requires someone else to use) B) If one of them gets knocked out his comrade can pull him away from danger and like toss him behind a wall or fence. C) If one of them is mind controlled, the other guy will engage in close range combat with him, either knocking him cold if he has something like a power armour. AI loves to blast your troops with MC'ed troops at point blank. But otherwise his comrade will foil his attacks against rest of your team. D) So they can cover each other's back armour, literally. Infantry armours have weaker backside armour but if you slap two guys back to back, any attack against either of them would hit their frontal armour. This makes the difference between few days in infirmary and taking no damage from attack. This is most notable with Cyber and Tritanium suit which will easily tank balistic weapons from front but a hit to the back could do enough damage to overpower the damage treshold.
59) Utilize the fact that projectiles have to travel to its target. Compared to modern XCOM 1 and 2, using obstacles to catch projectiles is possible.... or other people as meatshields.
But this becomes practical with heavy weapon platforms. Just like in real life, simply advance behind your tank and let it absorb attacks indended to hurt your soldiers. Sectopod takes the cake because its the largest XCOM unit in the game with massive hitbox and massive armour.
60) Turbolaser weapons Turbolaser weapons are step up from laser weapons, they deal more damage and have more weapon types covered. However the best features about Turbolaser weapons is its infinite ammo and decent accuracy. Infinite ammo will turn this weapon type in to the longest lasting weapon type you will be using and this is a sort of weapon that is perfect for long missions like HQ raids or base asaults. And its damage output is like double the Blackops weapons with good accuracy on top. For example, Scatter Turbolaser (Laser minigun) deals 50 damage per hit and fires in a volley of 15 beams. Most human enemies have 50-120 HP. This is how you can mow down 5-12 people in a single volley if they line up and the damage it can do is no joke. This goes for most turbolaser weapons that they will kill most enemies in roughly two hits.
One of the drawbacks however is that they are very heavy. Its not impossible to use without power armour but dont expect to carry something else. For example, Scatter Turbolaser has weight of 51. This means only your strongest dudes in your squad can carry it in something like heavy tactical armour. With cyberarmour you should be better off, it has better protection that tritanium armour but doesnt penalize you that much with carry weight. Turbolaser rifle has weight of 16 so thats not a problem but the hard hitting variations like heavy turbolaser or scatter will require strong hands to wield but boy they are worth it. Especially the scatter laser which actually has solid accuracy even on medium range.
61) Stuffing aliens to your backpack If you havent noticed, you can walk over an alien and stuff it in your soldiers backpack, yes, an agent will grab a sectoid and shows him in the pocket. Well, that sounds pointless, but actually its not. Any item in your soldiers inventory will be turned over at the base. Including living enemies. So since there are plenty of research items barred behind research of one person then... why just not grab him, get everyone to EVAC and GTFO ?. The best example is getting infestor, you need him for progress and he is...dangerous at the stage of the game you get to meet him. So why not just shoot him till he drops unconcious, send the largest TU agent over him, stuff him in your pocket and return and leave. You got what you came for and you skipped a hectic fight on top of it.
But what if the alien wakes up ?. Well, he will drop on the title next to the agent and will resume its existence on the field. If suddenly a sectoid gone puff from your inventory, then he is walking somewhere, trying to find his weapon. You can also throw bodies so your soldiers can simply fetch a body, even if there is like a broken catwalk between them.
62) Pre-Priming items During inventory screen when you are about to touch down, you can pre-prime items by right clicking on them. So you can save TU and give your troops already primed grenades that can be thrown at turn 1. Though be careful to not prime something like a dynamite and leave it on the weapon pile since it will explode in your craft. Also if a soldier is having a primed explosive in his inventory and he goes KO or gets killed, his items will explode in his inventory, finishing him off and also possibly destroying everyone around him. You can leave preprimed smoke grenade in your weapon pile on purpose so it gives your men cover at the start. You can also activate flashlights and leave it on the weapon pile so you get hefty line of sight around your craft, though dont do this when fighting cultists since it gives them a clear shot at your men. Prematurely preparing explosives is very useful if you know that you will be ambushed at your landing site.
I'd agree with this. As far as I can tell - at least from my latest playthrough - is that the Taser Cannon is a pretty niche weapon given the stats and when it (usually) becomes available. The only early game mission I could have imagined using it is against Black Lotus - specifically to stun the Avatar when it's flying. But I was able to bring her down with Tasers just fine, so I didn't actually need the cannon. Everything else is probably better served by lighter weapons that can carry more ammunition or by melee (Stun rod etc.). But maybe I'm missing something here.
When i was studying its stats in UFOpedia it seems that Taser cannon has splash damage ? Well not sure when was the last time i was trying to capture 6 dudes at once, if its flying, i'll swat it out with baton shotgun shells, if its crap at melee (iek sectoids) then i will bash their skull in. If its dangerous up close, then i will snipe it with tranq darts and baton shells. If i need one guy out of group of 5, i'll just stun the one i need and mow down the rest with auto fire. Its not like you even need to capture bulk enemies, most of the time need you need one specific enemy which is usually visually disctinct from his mates and doesnt go in mobs of 5 or more. And selling them for pocket change isnt worth the risk of them waking up and shooting you in the back, i'll rather stun one, handcuff him (even multiple times, just to be sure) and then start killing others. They will surrender eventually so its not like i wont have any other captures aside from my VIP.
Another bonus for other weapons is that you can usually carry something else. Stun Rod can be in your inventory while your dude has assault rifle in his hand and can switch at any time. Baton shells can be quickly ejected and real buckshots can be loaded in when its time to kill. If you have taser cannon, what else you can bring ? So only the top % strenght agents can carry atleast a pistol ?.
Can the ammo weight for taser cannon be reduced by half atleast ? Like its 22 for 2 shot magazine and that is abit ludicrous. Look i guess the batteries to power this thing aint gona be light as a feather but...
Lets compare it to the standard Taser Weight 5 Max range 5 Clip size 2 Clip weight 2 (So a loaded taser has 7 weight points) 44 electric damage.
Taser Cannon Weight - 16 Max range - 10 Clip size - 2 Clip weight - 22 (So a loaded Taser Cannon alone weights 38 points, which is more than loaded multi rocket launcher (8 rockets) which stands at 32) 65 electric damage.
Since the statistic jump isnt anything ground breaking, damage boost isnt even double the default and range is doubled. Shouldnt battery pack weight only like 2.5x - 2.7x as much as the standard tazer clip ?
It really makes it quite unattractive option since only with powerarmour or synthsuits you can carry it, with already heavy armours like Tritanium Suit you wont have room for anything else and at the point where you will be running around in power armours and synthsuits you can simply grab the electric prod and smack them for 72 electric stun points or throw barrages of stun grenades... or snipe them with tranq darts.
And you should be happy that it does actually, atleast you have plenty of cover to hunker behind. Getting this in a countryside map was one hell of a fight.
35) Learn weapon silluetes, or atleast this one. This is heavy plasma.
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
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 ?
Spoiler:
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"
Spoiler:
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"
Spoiler:
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
Spoiler:
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
Spoiler:
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
Spoiler:
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
Spoiler:
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
Spoiler:
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
Spoiler:
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
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%).
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But anyway, great work.
