Since there's not a lot of discussion about this mod I figured that I would post a little bit to help newbies learn more about the mod since this is an enjoyable play. It also feels pretty close to the lore in gameplay, and as a long time Halo fan I found this mod to be pretty fun and I think it would be great for it to get more attention and support.
Disclaimer: I am not infallible and there are probably things I got wrong somewhere. If you find them go ahead and correct me as I do not want to spread misinformation.
The general idea:
This mod reenacts the fall of Reach from Halo, which means its going to be a short campaign (about two months). You may not think that is going to be a lot of time, but with all the enemy transports flying around you'll have plenty of missions to go on.
Big things to note:
1. THIS IS NOT A FINISHED MOD! At the time of this writing you can tell this mod still has a long way to go before it is complete and you will find stuff like bugs or unbalanced missions. There are still many things which can be implemented to improve gameplay, and make the mod more interesting. Do not expect a completely polished and finished game.
2. No research: You really think your egg heads are going to do in two months what the rest of humanity could do in 25 years?
3. No production: All your stuff can be bought.
4. Air Combat: This is a big part of the mod and you will have access to both fighter craft (such as longswords and sabers) or capital ships like the UNSC light frigate. Covenant craft will be the same, ranging from banshee's to CSS battle cruisers. The idea is the same, use fighters to fight fighters and dropships, and capital ships to fight other capital ships.
+ As of the time of this writing, air combat is basically a joke as you are able to down every Covenant craft that you encounter as long as you don't do something stupid like send a longsword at a battle cruiser. If you want enemies to land, you will have to wait it out, or shoot them down and this is where basically all of your missions will come from (except the scripted final mission, and the base assaults).
+ You can use Saber fighters or Longswords, but just use a capital ship for most things as those are very heavily armed and can roll any craft. They can also deploy squads using drop pods into the crash sites too.
Ground Combat:
This is the main draw to this mod. While only a few Covenant units have been implemented, the majority of the UNSC and Covenant arsenals have been replicated and combat between your dudes and the aliens feels faithful to how it was in the books. Combat is challenging, fun, and will not be easy.
1. The main thing to remember is that you will be flying in with smaller sized squads than in other games (6-12) and you will be facing a lot of enemies. Use smoke and cover liberally as you will always be heavily outnumbered.
2. While the alien weapons do a lot less damage than plasma tier weapons in the original X-Com game, your dudes armor is not that great and can (and will) die in one or two hits. This is not Halo 1 on easy mode here...
3. All weapons will have very low TU costs to fire, meaning that it is conceivable that you will get 5-6 aimed/burst/full auto shots off a turn. You can complain about ammo shortages, but believe me...you will need to fire that much.
Enemies: There are three units that have been implemented at the time of this writing; Grunts, Jackals, and Elites.
1. Grunts: Weak units as you would expect. These guys can be one shot by most weapons and can be ignored in favor of more dangerous threats for the most part. The only exception is grunt heavies (green guys) who are carrying a Fuel Rod Gun. Shoot them first.
2. Jackals: A bit tougher than grunts, but still weak. Their shield gauntlet makes them a bit tanky, but they can still be one shot by most weapons. The only ones that are really dangerous are the snipers since guys with Covenant Carbines and good firing accuracy is not a good combo for your dudes.
3. Elites: These guys make the mod hard. Their normal stats are alright, but the fact that each one has personal shields makes them very, very tanky. Even the weakest Elite, the minors (blue guys), have a shield strength of 200, which means they can soak up a lot of shots before you are able to start hitting their actual health. You will need to focus fire with several troops in order to bring these guys down...and there are always a lot of these guys.
Your Dudes: You have four options, Marines, Army Troopers, ODSTs, or Spartans.
1. Marines: Probably the weakest option. They are comparable to original game rookies and they boast slightly higher reaction times and TUs than the Army guys since they are supposed to be more mobile. However, the rest of their stats suck in comparison to the Army guys and in my opinion, there's nothing these guys can do that the Army troopers can't do better. Use them if you like role playing.
2. Army troopers: Comparable to the original game rookies, these guys are less mobile than Marines, but they have higher firing accuracy and strength stats. They cost the same as Marines (about $40000) and their stats tend to be better.
- NOTE: Army and Marines get basically the same armor options: Standard, light, Balaclava, and Cap. Standard is the tankiest, but doesn't give additional bonuses. Light gives up a lot of armor for better TU and Reactions (enough that Army guys can reach standard amor Marine TUs). Balaclava is a middle ground between standard and light giving some TU bonus for losing a bit less armor. The cap gives up a little armor for extra bravery. I tried out every armor and found that they really didn't impact my gameplay that much, but giving Snipers and scouts light armor isn't a bad idea. Alternatively, giving everyone standard means they might survive an extra hit if they are lucky.
3. ODSTs: These guys are spec ops of the UNSC and it shows. They have veteran stats (firing accuracy in the 80s and 90s, 50s and 60s strength, etc.) They only have one armor choice, but it is better than the regular troops anyway. They cost a lot, but considering how easy it is to make money off of captured Covenant equipment, and how low the squad sizes are in the mod, $200000 isn't a bad deal.
4. Spartans: These guys are the super soldiers and all of their stats are very high. Their armor is also the tankiest, although Spartans will still die in a few hits as they do not have shields yet in the game (unless you add it yourself as it is pretty easy to do so). Spartans are the best however you will have to sell multiple Kidneys to hire more than the initial six you start off with at 5 million a pop.
- NOTE: You will not care about score for the campaign, but ODST and Spartan deaths will result in a large negative to your score. If you care about that, be careful of losing these guys.
A player that focuses on optimization will mostly likely use a mix of the four, ODSTs and Spartans for heavy weapons carriers and snipers, and Army and Marines for scouts and cannon fodder. I like to stay faithful to lore and logic and use all squads of one type (a.k.a only Marines, only Army, only ODSTs, etc.). Either way, it can still be pretty fun.
Weapons: Most weapons will have very low TU costs to fire with some exceptions. Now the difference between Covenant weapons and UNSC is that human weapons tend to deal less damage, but are more accurate, while alien weapons deal more damage, but less accurate. I have very little experience with using Covenant weapons as I like the human weapons more. However, you will capture enough of their equipment that outfitting your squad with Covenant weapons is very doable.
1. Covenant Weapons: I have not used these enough to comment on them. Play it yourself if you want to know more.
2. Human Weapons:
- The pistols: You have three options with the magnum doing the highest damage, and the other two being a bit less, but more damage. I prefer the SCOM pistol myself, but ultimately these will end up being backup weapons. I use these when my main gun runs dry, and you do not have time to reload.
- The Assault rifles: You have two rifles, the M5AB, or the M37. They are basically the exact same gun, except with the TUs for the firing action swapped out a bit, and the M5AB has more ammo. You can fire Double shots (two well aimed, decent range shots), burst (I think three decently aimed, decent range shots), and full auto. This is a good mid range option and I use it less as an assault rifle and more like a discount LMG. Good on my support troopers.
- The BR55: This is a great marksman ship rifle for your sniper troops. It can fire in highly accurate bursts or auto fire and hits hard enough that a single guy can kill an Elite Minor one on one with the weapon. This is the weapon of choice for most of my sniper teams.
- The DMR: An alternative to the BR55, it only fires single shots, but they are of much higher damage. This is a good weapon for one-shotting any Grunts or Jackals on the map. Terrible for engaging Elites though.
- The Sniper Rifle: Actually crappy. Unlike the other weapons, it has high TU costs so you will only get 2 aimed, or 3 snap shot firings a turn if you stand still. Each shot does 100 damage which seems like a lot, but when you factor Elite shield strength its actually dog shit. The gun is overkill on grunts and jackals so you would never shoot them with it. Meanwhile, Elites have at least 200 shield strength at their weakest, which means you will need at least two shots to break the shield of a weaker one. Three shots in total to kill it, and that is just a minor. The other Elites have stronger shields, so you are much better off taking another weapon.
+ I actually moded the sniper to have 200 damage in an attempt to balance it out to make it more like the first person shooter games where one shot would break a minor's shield. At 200 damage it becomes more worth it to take.
- The M7: This smg is okay. It doesn't do a lot of damage, but it fires a lot of shots and has good ammo capacity. The aim and range is not great, but in close quarters it can do well.
- The M7S: The lore uses this as the spec ops SMG for ODSTs, you will call it a sub machine gun, I call it the shield stripper. I love this thing as it fires a lot of shots, and is pretty accurate. I put this on all of my scouts, and on a trooper with decent aim they can get a lot of hits on someone with it. They may not kill an Elite, but they will greatly weaken the shield enough that a marksman with a DMR or BR55 can finish it.
- Frag Grenades: Mostly useless unless you need some indirect fire like if a guy is hiding on the other side of a hill.
- Smoke Grenades: Its a staple in every other Openxcom mod, and it will be here too. Use liberally, especially when exiting a Pelican.
- Med-kits: A must take as it will keep your guys in the fight longer. Take especially if you have Spartans as bleeding out with one is painful.
Squad tactics and composition:
The typical scout-sniper approach works well here as in most games so build around that. Hide snipers behind smoke or behind cover and use scouts to take on enemies in piecemeal packets. The biggest thing is to remember to concentrate fire on an Elite to finish him before moving on to the next target. You will need multiple guys to kill one Elite! Identify, major threats like anyone holding a Fuel Rod cannon and kill them first.
- Do not hide guys inside smoke, make sure they are behind smoke and have a bit of distance between the cloud and them as plenty of Elites will be packing energy swords. Energy swords will one shot anyone, including Spartans, and smoke obscures them and will allow Elites to get close and sneak up on your guys. You have been warned!
- Make sure all of your guys are out of the field of your fire. You will be shooting a lot of shots in this mod and they seem to have some mysterious power to magnetically attract friendly fire. I have had guys on the other side of the map accidentally hit another fireteam because of the amount of shots they spit out each turn. Friendly fire is a VERY real possibility here.
As for squad composition...its whatever works for you. Personally, I tend to group my troops into three man fire teams since most crafts deploy in some multiple of 3. The crafts are that follows:
- Falcon Gunship: 6 men
- Falcon: 9 men
- Pelican: 12 men
- Heavy Frigate: 8 men
- Light Frigate 12 men
I tend to use two different fireteams for my missions, the heavy weapons team and the maneuver team.
- The heavy weapons team consists of three troops with the following loadouts:
+ One guy with a Sniper rifle for heavy hitting and long range damage, and a pistol for backup.
+ One guy with a DMR, a pistol, and a med-kit. He may also be the team lead or the commander.
+ One guy with a BR55, a Fuel Rod cannon (our only substitute for a rocket launcher since the human version hasn't been implemented yet), and a pistol.
- The maneuver team:
+ One marksman with a BR55, and a pistol.
+ One support trooper with a M5AB, med-kit and a pistol.
+ One scout with a M7S 'shield stripper', and a pistol.
I also tend to give every trooper one smoke and one frag grenade.
For the crafts I tend to do this:
- Falcon Gunship: 2 maneuver sections (although I will replace one marksman BR55 with a sniper rifle).
- Falcon VTOL: 2 maneuver sections and one heavy weapons team.
- Pelican, Light Frigate: 3 maneuver sections, 1 heavy weapons team.
- Heavy Frigate: 2 maneuver sections, 1 two man heavy weapons team with the Fuel Rod gunner removed.
This is just some advice on what I found to be effective, and there are many players more experienced than me that can do this better. You may also have your own playstyle so do whatever works. I should also note, that all troops come with combat knives built into their characters so melee is possible and viable in close quarters.
The last bit I will mention is about craft deployment. Falcons and Pelicans are like regular craft in which you will deploy from a VTOL and will be exposed to enemy fire. Falcons are a bit better as you have two exit points that are raised and can provide good firing platforms for snipers. Pelicans are more like traditional Skyrangers where you will exit out the back of the craft and are VERY vulnerable to an unluckily placed fuel rod gunner. The frigates on the other hand, will deploy your troops in drop pods which is pretty cool. They can shoot out of the drop pod and easily clear an LZ before pushing out with them. The only danger is that the pods can be dropped right in front of downed enemy craft or squads of enemies. This can result in things going quite poorly, but that's XCOM.
