Tips for cave missions

[Dadimus_Maximus]

I just got my first Chtonite Mini Base, and it was a bit rough, but I made it through in the end. Looking back at all the zombie hives, spider nests, and other things (like trekking to Dimension X), I must wonder if there's some valuable insight that can be shared with me about cave missions.

I've noticed that not all of them are truly dark, I didn't need lights for the minibase or dimension X. But I'm pretty sure I did for zombie hives. Is there a good answer to dark caves besides leap-frogging with flares?

Also, what are good weapons or tactics for the caves? I barely survived the silicoids by mulching their armor with miniguns and then tazing them. For most other things, automatic shotguns or heavy shotguns work decently well, until I hit heavy armor. And if the people in front of the group fail to kill the enemy, it becomes a lot harder to support them with the others. I also learned my lesson with that Dimension X cave, that Nobelon is a must-have because these missions tend to drag on.

I haven't researched "Going Deeper" yet, so I'm a bit worried about what awaits me below. Getting reaction-fired by plasma destroyers in close range is hilarious, but painful.

[psavola]

I think all caves have light level 7 or 9. You really don't need to bring any extra light at all - even though it's dark, you can actually still see quite enough. Usually there aren't even enough tiles on a direct line anyway.

In general I'd usually recommend taking 4-5 dogs to various caves (assuming you have kitsune or osprey caliber craft). They are more dispensable and in close quarters reaction barking can be useful. Weapons with reasonable reaction fire is often also useful. If the mission is not an important one, or you don't want the excitement, it may be worth skipping some of those missions.

As far as I recall, the Dimension X cave layout is basically the same, or at least the path to the exit nodes is easily recognizable. It can be difficult to find every enemy unit (2x2 units can also be stuck somewhere) and most of the times I just go straight to the exit point, not even trying to find and kill all the enemies.

As for Chtonite Minibase Assault, one way to deal with silacoids is a high-explosive. Though it could make some parts of the caves inaccessible. Melee weapons work rather well. It's relatively safe to melee them because they have no ranged reaction shots and their bite is abysmally (but not completely) inaccurate against a good reactions agent. In later game if you have developed strong psionics you will want to MC them. Mind-controlling them and their psiVision 20 makes the Chtonite Minibase Assaults much easier and can help you avoid nasty surprises.

The next parts of Going deeper (Shogg village) are very easy; you may need to repeat them multiple times. Only the last part of the arc (reptoids) requires a little bit more care.

[Dadimus_Maximus]

I never really used dogs before, despite everyone singing their praises.  But I guess in caves where it's hard to make use of 14+ agents at once, they seem like a better idea.

[Stone Lake]

The most important thing in caves is a motion scanner. Dogs/rats have it as builtin action or you can make a few. Scanning allows you to see incoming enemies from beyond the walls, while being covered by said walls. Nuff said.

After scanning, use alt / alt+ctrl to highlight scanned dots. Scanners pinpoint enemies horizontally. If the enemy on different floor, it will still give a dot. You may then pinpoint the floor by bringing a rat or hybrid to the dot - they'll see the enemy above/below with their short psi-sense.

Scanners mostly trivialise many such missions - HQs, underwater, caves, ships, bases, etc.  at the cost of some effort.

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Dogs are good for scanner alone, but they also have some anti-camo, some heat-vision (anti-smoke), decent night vision. Rats have all that increased.

Furthermore, dog's bark "damages" enemy TUs, thus 95% (5% is damn chupacabras) of incoming melee threats will be stopped by a decent full-TU dog. And they're pretty good in melee, being a sectoid's nightmare in right hands.

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Chtonites enjoy beating beaten into submission - synthsuits are very good for such missions if you have them. Silacoids are "weak" to HE, so use explosive rounds. I kinda like autocannon - AC-HE.
For Dim X outside, tactical grenade launcher / gas works wonders on spitters / megaworms / anthropods, but may need experience playing with smoke. Flys / whatever else is better dealt with HE rounds, IIRC.

[betatester]

I also like Pickaxes for digging new ways or as an alternative for explosives when you can damage yourself

[Rag]

The Flamethrower is really good against SOME cave missions but not all (just be careful not to fire it too close), against zombies or Dimension X they do a good job but Silacoids are immune to fire and fast enemies like Chupacabra or Zombie Infectors will wreck you due to the flamethrower having no reaction fire. I had to reload to swap from Flamethrowers to different weapons when I realised it was a Silacoid mission so they might be a terrible idea if playing Ironman due to potentially having a worthless weapon. I personally used the BlackOps Auto-Sniper this time for most cave missions, with high accuracy agents its surprisingly accurate in close quarters and the high damage can punch through most things in the caves, but sometimes Chtonites did take 2 hits so that risks a reaction fire

Experienced dogs are great but not sure how good fresh dogs would be, due to the tight courners in caves its usually possible to posistion a dog so they can bark at enemies coming around the courner without them being able to shoot first

In my first playthrough I used the Asuka 4000 for cave missions and found it to be the perfect cave mission weapon, but I had the Tritanium Foundry then (heard it got made harder to get now) so I doubt its worth the resources anymore unless you get really lucky on alien alloys / are into the invasion phase

I also like Pickaxes for digging new ways or as an alternative for explosives when you can damage yourself

I'm in love with pickaxes this time and would always recommend having them on hand, I had quite a few impossible maps so far without the pickaxe to break walls