Final thoughts of a lost campaign

[TheCurse]

We´re writing the year 2000. Somewhere mid.
Xcom has like 150 mio in the banks and a serious tech problem.
Research tree is at 24%, but there´s so much aliens and tech to research the meager 50 scientists can't keep up with it at all.
Current state is cyber armor, still miniguns and there´s some laser tech.
2 cults are done for. Various cave missions have been ignored, since they cost dozens of tries and still pay a heavy toll on experienced soldiers.
1 alien base and 1 embassy stand, nowhere near being raidable.
daily several ufos spawn, but wtf to do with them? raven sure won't shoot down that many.
there has been a groundhog day with 40h til alien retailation on 2nd base and about 20 tries how to survive it. no chance, its some tentacly psi monsters (apparently weak to lasers), they just psi control about 7 soldiers each turn.
about every ufo type has been recovered, alien prison (2) are full, and research can't keep up.
been ignoring all missions for a month since its just grind anymore, wanted to make up for it next month.
failed to find enough landed UFOs, lost with -2000 in 2nd month...
(about 3rd try by now, restarted 2 times because i kept getting nowhere)

so for many many weeks play time not to go to waste, some lessons learned for next try:
-get a base just for manufacturing
-get a base just for training soldiers (like 8 gyms or so) so i can loose more and keep up with it
-maybe secondary research base
-hope 20mio income covers most of that
-miniguns rock everything, except psi tentacle aliens and sectiod reaction shots
-cave missions still no idea (except the syndicate ones, they are easy)

some feedback on gameplay:
-large storage facility could use a buff in capacity
-gym definately could use a large buff in capacity
-a little more streamlined story advance. its really cool that there´s no actual order of stuff to do, but with the mass of content and no apparent priority its easy to loose a year or 2 without actually going anywhere...
-some proper way to defend soldiers in cave missions. killing stuff is easy. something coming around a corner and killing 4 people is too... (god i hate cave missions... D: though i do like that they exist. just like to have a way not to loose 80%+ crew each time)
-research tree adaption in terms of usage/manufacturing. having plasma weapons in store for a year. understandably without reseach i can't produce ammo or so. but by that time someone should have been able to figure out how to pull the trigger on one of those...
-armor/HP/resistance of stuff on autopsies instead of live ones. makes sense you could get from a dead body how to damage it, without needing a live one
-is it possible to color stuff different in sell screen that is/not already researched?
-maybe less UFOs at that game stage. every day 3-10 is seriously overkill...

but in the end, still an awesome game 
the only thing dreading me is having to start all over and it´ll take so many weeks just to get there again... so time consuming... D:

[JustTheDude/CABSHEP]

There is a set priority a player is encouraged to go trough. First are council reports, then destruction of every major cult before invasion (or soon after) etc.

You don't have to deal with everything, you don't have to shoot down every UFO that appears, you don't have to research everything as many topics are pure fluff (with score addition).

Also I don't know how many space you really need and what you are storing there? Main Research base requires standard equipment for soldier and every new fancy tech piece (but only one example of each). Manufacturing base requires obviously equipment for soldiers to defend it and resources. Then you can have training and interception bases where you can store other stuff. I never had any problems with storage space when I was able to afford more than one base. You probably don't need 1000 pistols, or whatever lies in those warehouses.

Motion Detectors and mines/proximity nades are a great defence in cave missions. Caves also show weakness of miniguns, use other weapons not only for better performance, but also for less boredom.

I belive that you can use most of the weapon you find from aliens right away, like those carried by Apocalypse Aliens in "Alien Hunt".
There is no way to colour stuff in sell screen, but you can click on them with middle mouse button and menu that appears will say if it is required to research, or if you can just sell it.

[TheCurse]

i had a lot of plasma stuff in stores, couldn't use or research it.
also several 1000 elerium. kinda didn't want to sell it...
sold everything else i don't need.
the problem with the mass of UFOs was, i couldn't shoot them down yet (had raven researched, but not built, it seemed kinda weak), so they seriously dragged the score down.
research at that stage was only living aliens, alien tech and such (no plasma yet... D:), but progessing there took so many months.