Author Topic: My First Ever Base Defence, and my Second Base Defence  (Read 6569 times)

Offline XCOMFan419

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My First Ever Base Defence, and my Second Base Defence
« on: August 01, 2014, 04:51:59 am »
"Corners covered? Check. Doors closed? Check. Rookies rooking? Rookies? ROOKIES? Oh wait one guy died and now half of you are panicked. Oh please don't sho- goddammit please don't panic godammit. No. No Don't do that. No please don't shoot another soldier oh my god why."

- 13 turns later -

"Wait two of you are unpanicked? TIME TO RUN INTO THE HANGARS!"

So my first ever base defence was very, very disorganized and nearly a failure. Were it not for two people running into the hangars I probably would've lost the base. Those two soldiers bought valuable time so I could reposition and start kicking alien ass. (R.I.P In peace Carol Dubois/Slow & Brian Daar/Cwrd) There were no HWP, as this was the only base I forgot to buy/manufacture tanks at. All of my rookies were equipped with laser rifles, and this was a Gazer attack, so they were hard to kill. Not to mention rookie aim.

It took me several turns to actually win. Mostly because my soldiers were panicked/dead, killed by another soldier. I believe 10+ soldiers died due to panicking and berserking. Only around 5 were actually killed by aliens. I'm rather surprised I didn't actually lose the base.

"Okay. This is one of my good bases. I have some squaddies, sergeants, some captains and some colonels. But mostly rookies. Some of you have plasma weapons...which is good. Others have laser rifles, which is okay. Now let's see here..AH! I have tanks. This is going to be good. All right let's see here. I have Hover tanks and some conventional tanks, plus my two cyberdiscs. All right, this should be good."

- A few turns later... -

"Ordinance train coming through, choo choo!"

This time around I had experienced soldiers and a metric tonne of tanks (Which isn't a lot of tanks if you think about it.) I positioned my soldiers on the first turn. Kept my tanks at bay and in safety, where I could use them in case of a serious attack.  Two turns went by and I realized that this was a Ethereal attack. So I took my most psi-weak soldiers out of the frontlines and put out some good soldiers. A couple more turns went by, mostly exchanging reaction fire. I sent my forward most three soldiers up and started to kill a few more Ethereals. I opened up the doors on the Access Lift and I started to send tanks through in one large line. It was a big ol' ordinance train :P

Two casualties total. RIP Colonel Van Den Groot and Captain...er....Captain Cannon Fodder.

So those are the only two base defences I've ever encountered. I've run through about 3 playthroughs. Is this normal or should I turn on Aggressive Retaliation on in the Advanced Options menu?

Offline Hobbes

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Re: My First Ever Base Defence, and my Second Base Defence
« Reply #1 on: August 01, 2014, 05:10:00 am »
If you correctly design your bases then base defense is easy. You can get some ideas about it here Base Layout Strategy, the basic idea is to create a single chokepoint and wait for the aliens and out of their sight to ambush them at that location. And never place your soldiers set for reaction fire - it's a sure way of the aliens throwing a blaster bomb at your direction. 

Offline BlackLibrary

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Re: My First Ever Base Defence, and my Second Base Defence
« Reply #2 on: August 02, 2014, 09:56:01 pm »
Never set up for reaction fire.  Sometimes, you'll be pleased as punch...more often than not, however, you are the one reacting to the unexpected corpse that used to be a guy you had high hopes for!

Offline Cristao

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Re: My First Ever Base Defence, and my Second Base Defence
« Reply #3 on: October 16, 2015, 09:59:15 am »
Interesting I normally want to be the one aggressive during base defences. I tend to send out my tanks first then have the infantry follow to mop up.

Offline hellrazor

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Re: My First Ever Base Defence, and my Second Base Defence
« Reply #4 on: October 16, 2015, 10:13:27 am »
Make Defense LAyout with 1 chokepoint, usually the access lift.

Use tanks, or high reaction soldiers to open doors at chokepoint.

Bomb Hangars out with Blaster Bombs, or Large Rockets.

Send in Tanks for further spotting and firedraw, infantry follows for killing surviving aliens.

Base defense successful. :)

Online Meridian

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Re: My First Ever Base Defence, and my Second Base Defence
« Reply #5 on: October 16, 2015, 10:14:15 am »
If you correctly design your bases then base defense is easy. You can get some ideas about it here Base Layout Strategy, the basic idea is to create a single chokepoint and wait for the aliens and out of their sight to ambush them at that location. And never place your soldiers set for reaction fire - it's a sure way of the aliens throwing a blaster bomb at your direction.

Single choke point is a good idea, but (in my opinion) only for middle and late game.

Early game (i.e. no armour, HE packs and rocket launchers + no psi screening yet) you might have a lot of difficulties fighting Sectoids+Cyberdiscs in this setup. Cyberdiscs can get into the choke point before you, camp there forever and just snipe your troops... happened to me a few times. Since then I leave two choke points in my bases early game... until April 1999 or so.

Offline crwydryny

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Re: My First Ever Base Defence, and my Second Base Defence
« Reply #6 on: December 07, 2015, 04:35:32 pm »
my usual staregy for base defence (at least early game) is to first set up a choke point to slow alien egress, in an early game base I usually have about 14 soldiers (10 men for main team, 4 to replace wounded soldiers) and usually 1 or 2 rocket tanks.

first turn I move my guys into position near the choke point, usually with a couple of guys held back for sniping from the far end of the base while the rest move in close.
of my team 5 are the heavy weapon team (1 rocket launcher with a heavy rocket and as many light or heavy rockets he can carry, 2 auto cannons with HE ammo, and 2 heavy cannons with HE ammo, all with pistols as a backup) the rest are the rifle team armed with rifles, grenades and smoke grenades. (med kits, motion trackers and stun rods are carried by the rifle team depending on availability and their strength)

when it comes to the battle, I use my snipers to pick of exposed enemy, then leap frog my team into the access lift using available cover, smoke grenades and liberal application of explosives to keep the enemy pinned. my tank is usually the first into the access lift with troops backing it up, then again the first into the hanger.
it's then a case of clearing the hanger one by one, again the liberal use of explosives especially rockets is great here as there is little to damage, the explosives clear a larger area and create smoke which hides your movements from the enemy. where possible use the tank as a spotter while rifle teams snipe the aliens

this tactic keeps up through mid game when you have armour, and heavier weapons such as plasma rifles. with small launchers replacing heavy cannons.

by the late game you can use psionics to take control of enemy units, then chain it to control as many as possible before using them to kill any uncontrolled unit or each other (nothing like mind controling a dozen mutons to line up against a wall while you shoot them all firing squad style


also as for how often base defense mission happen, this depends on several factors, if you're doing really well, you can expect to have the aliens begin searchhing for you base from the get go, while if you're doing bad they won't bother, then you have the fact that if you shoot down scouts and such on a retaliation mission before they find your base then they'll never find it to launch an attack. in my last game I was getting 2-3 alien retaliation missions a month but the scouts were being shot down far from the base so there was only one base attack (which was early in the game when I only had radar and didn't spot the scouts earlier.