Base placement and other mechanic nitty-gritties

[Quinch]

What is the best kind of location to put your initial base? I always put it in Siberia because that allows me best landmass coverage - however, this assumes that alien activity is even across the globe, i.e. the UFOs always pick a random {dry} spot to conduct their operations. Is that the case, or are different regions differently weighted for alien activity?

[cjones]

I usually put it on western Russia border.  This gives me coverage of europe, most of Asia and north Africa.  I used to put first base in USA but seemed like I always had base defense in month 1 or 2 there.  I can't recall ever getting a base defense in west Russia. At least not til like month 3 or 4.

Also, since Russia never leaves, IMO it is good to keep them happy since you are building up monthly finding from them that will never go away.  Of course there are only a few mods that have not allowed for me to just engineer all my money.  So funding is of course mostly irrelevant after month 3 or 4 anyway.

[yrizoud]

I try to cover a maximum number of funding countries, so my usual choice is similar to cjones' : I pick a spot in Europe above the Black Sea , when larger radar is built it covers the whole western Europe.

[cjones]

I know its prob been said but does radar stack in open xcom?  I know the original game did not and some mods do or don't. 

[NoelBuddy]

I know its prob been said but does radar stack in open xcom?  I know the original game did not and some mods do or don't.

Yes. Multiple radars multiply your detection chance.

As for placement, I go somewhere near Liberia, it gives you early game coverage of both N.Africa and most of Europe and globally interceptors can be effective everywhere except Australia from there. Then first radar base either in S.America or SE.Asia depending on where I see UFOs.  Activity is weighted, basically the more population and/or funding countries in an area the more activity, look at the rulesets for spoiler level breakdowns on mission selection tho.

[Quinch]

Gotcha, so activity is weighted by various factors.

Another question - does smoke stack? I.e. does dropping multiple smoke grenades in the same spot reduce visibility more than a single one?

[NoelBuddy]

Not sure about stacking smoke density, if you overlap the blast radii the space in between will be more well concealed but that may be a function of it being further away from an edge of the cloud.  Also when hiding from elevated shooters if you have multi-level explosions you have smoke stacks/clouds on the second and third levels to take into account blocking LoS.

[Hobbes]

Crete on the Mediterranean. Gives you cover over almost all of Europe, North Africa and a bit of Central Asia once you've upgraded your radar.