How to get points?

[legionof1]

Sniper and to some extent rifles used be able to benefit from smoke largely mitigating return fire keeping them safe, allowing them sit largely stationary on high ground. This in turn allowed the player to risk fewer gals while having a high volume of fire. High volume of fire in turn allowed a broader range of acceptable damage on a gun.

Now the player is behind in vision in the majority of cases regardless of tech progress. Snipers and long range rifles can't be sure of spotting in self defense of there position anymore. While i agree that smoke camping was not a healthy state for balance, i think the nerf was over done. And the root camping problem is STILL not solved. Now we just camp hard cover corners and hatches at night. 

Original problem still remains but now a whole slew of weapons went from good-reasonable to a waste of time. If your armament cant disable your target with 1-2 gals worth of TU it's not worth it. Gals being unharmed is simply to valuable to risk exposing more then a few gals at a time, given that you are outnumbered and/or outgunned for large portions of the game regardless of difficulty AND limited on bodies.

[KiriKaneko]

Also, never be afraid to kill a few people, grab their stuff, and leave. And if negative points are really a problem (not having a go here, but they shouldn't be that big a deal, so there's probably something going on), do poke around with the graphs screen (and note that you can scroll down on parts of it) as there might be intense activity in an area that you're not picking up. A spy zeppelin can be a real boon here.

Don't worry, I haven't played any of the other versions, I got some misinformation on the steam forum and I'm still learning, I'll probably be kicking myself for being such a noob any day now lol. Sadly I'm halfway through the second year and I'm still using tac vests, havent even researched mutant alliance. Since research gives points I decided to go with only 5 researchers and try to progress more slowly in tech to give myself time to build up cash, expand my radar coverage and be ready to buy new and good interceptors so I can get a higher point yield when my research runs out and I'm forced to research mutant alliance (and thus deal with higher point penalties from ignoring pogroms, I never actually researched it before but was warned on the other forum that after I research it the point penalty for ignoring pogroms goes from -400 to -1000)

I have had some problem with civvie ships. Every now and then the blue suit guys have those horrid iguns. Their aim is atrocious but all they need is a lucky shot to put someone in sickbay for a month, they've even killed someone before. It's not so bad if they landed somewhere normal, but if it's that green and red grass that slows your movement then it's hard to deal with. I might get some stun grenades, or start bringing the harpoon stun specifically to deal with those guys

I've been using melee but only for capturing on temple, warehouse, crackhouse and save sister. I've noticed it's very hit and miss. Experimented with stun baton, handle and fisticuffs. Fisticuffs kill too frequently, stun baton never kills but seems hard to hit with, the handle hits most easily and has armour pen, but sometimes it OHKOs while other times I have to bash someone like 10 times with it (on a high str/melee char). I personally consider them to be a gamble that I only use against enemies using ballistic small arms. Lost my favourite soldier on that progrom I won to a demon, because 4 of my soldiers with really high melee/str couldnt down a single demon who ran up to us with a chain gun by bashing it with handles. I used my last TUs to just shoot it in the back with a heavy shotgun to be safe but it survived that as well and killed someone. Maybe there's something better I should be using. Fuso sword looks to do insane damage but it's also lethal damage which for me defeats the point, although at least enemies cant reaction fire against melee

I've increased my researcher count to 16, because I've only got 2 of those 1000 point techs left, the enemy are building bases and I need to start getting better stuff to deal with pogroms and start splashing better ships for points, sounds like I'm WAY behind in tech right now and those bases are only going to worsen my negative point situation

Since I can't make laser cannons/gauss cannons, and I can't make new stills, is there anything I can make in production bases instead?

The booytypedia entries have given me some info about enemy weaknesses. I only get exact info from corpses, and I know that academy are weak to ballistics and resistant to lasers from their flavour text

[nrafield]

I hadn't realized that there still was a penalty for ignoring pogroms without researching that. So that's what took so many of my points away. Well, I still made my way through it, and so can you!

[KiriKaneko]

So there really is a progrom penalty? Is it -400 without the research and -1000 with it?

I ignored a progrom and still got a positive month. There were hardly any events but I was raiding a lot of landed/splashed UFOs so it seems that the "don't raid civilians" rule really is wrong and doesn't lead to point loss. I've got 3 more bases coming up which will have a sharkbike 50mm cannon in each one. I'll also build a workshop and living quarters in one of them so it can manufacture the ammunition,  and my main base can eventually convert into an alcohol production base (though I'll continue to use it as my main base as it has the laboratory and that's something I can never replace, it'll be game over if I lose it

[legionof1]

As I understand it pogrom prior to the research have no penalty IF you dont land at them and just let them expire. If you participate standard mission score applies with dead mutants being around -400 potential score if they all die. Pogroms are difficult to complete with both haste and safety. Often you must trade the speed needed to save the "allies" to preserve your own troops.



Deamons are exceptionally resistant to most types of damage, stun in particular. That said they dont bleed from wounds so getting some captures from normal shooting is not uncommon. The best bet for deamon captures is voodoo based tools.

Melee is a bit unreliable for the new player i will grant. Sort of like knife use in Call of duty titles. It is downright unbalanced alot of the time but the high skill floor keeps it from being too toxic. And much of the associated skill is knowing about the quirks and limitations and abusing them to the fullest.

The main things to take advantage of in this mod are: the fact that reactions only occur on movement within vision and units absolutely horrid narrow cones. The second case for reaction is when hit by shots NOT melee. Very often you can close to melee and down a target without reaction fire from the target. Additionally melee has strong stat scaling on stats that are quick and easy to improve. A low tech tree melee option remains effective mostly irregardless of foe.       

[sinisteragent]

Don't be hesitant to use lethal damage, especially in melee. Skilled stabbers are much more reliable than the handle. Sure it may be less "efficient" than capturing everyone, but if you worry too much about that you'll suck all the fun out of the game anyway.

I kill probably about half the enemies I find, sometimes almost everyone if it shakes out that way. This is especially true of guys like guild security, who are often fairly high ranking and relatively high threat (compared to the operatives who make up the bulk of the crews they tend to fly with) but go down to a couple of shots.  It also gains you captures indirectly quite often anyway - one one pogrom I went in hard and very lethal against the humanists, so that when I caught their leader and took him out (actually a stun, but a kill would have worked too), the remaining twelve instantly surrendered.

FWIW I am about 18 months in too, and kit mine out with a variety of still mostly weak armour. I'm not anal about it but try to fit everyone with armour that suits their stats and weapons somewhat, rather than putting everyone in expensive tac vests just because of higher armour values.

Also, yeah, the "don't raid civilians" rule is wrong, it should really be "don't raid government ships". Although even then you can still do it occasionally if it seems profitable enough, especially if it's over a nation with loads of other shipping activity so you can make up the difference by splatting someone else more. I've refrained from researching the "don't target civilian traffic" option because those cute little ships earn me a few hundred thousand a go, plus a trickle of easy experience for my weaker/newer hands.

[KiriKaneko]

Is there any reason to research dont shoot cvvies? I see it just unlocked and I assume it gates a lot of tech like mutant alliance does

Also does anyone know what damage the chrysalids are weak against? I'd like to raid that base again once I exhaust my available research

[legionof1]

Dont recall the dont track cives links but its not a major gate.

Chrisies are resistant to energy and immune to choking. Bullets and explosives are most effective but nothing deals extra damage. That said they are on the frail side for terror units with 96 hp and only 34 armor so even energy weapons largely overwhelm them with raw damage.

[Scorrpio]

So there really is a progrom penalty? Is it -400 without the research and -1000 with it?

I ignored a progrom and still got a positive month. There were hardly any events but I was raiding a lot of landed/splashed UFOs so it seems that the "don't raid civilians" rule really is wrong and doesn't lead to point loss. I've got 3 more bases coming up which will have a sharkbike 50mm cannon in each one. I'll also build a workshop and living quarters in one of them so it can manufacture the ammunition,  and my main base can eventually convert into an alcohol production base (though I'll continue to use it as my main base as it has the laboratory and that's something I can never replace, it'll be game over if I lose it

The advice was very specific: do not research Mutant Alliance until you have global reach.    Meaning, until you have a craft that can reach every point on the globe.   Case in point: in my early months, I had a few missions, including a pogrom, that my Airbus simply could not get to.   The advice was quite solid.    Once you research MA, you gotta at the very least fly to each pogrom and start the mission.   Pre-MA, not getting to a pogrom carries 0 penalty.  Post MA, you get a flat -1000.   If you do touch down and start the mission, you get the regular mission score.  In case of a pogrom, immediately retreating you get negatives for civilians killed by aliens, and that's it - which is always less than 1000.   

Far as civilian traffic goes, it is a matter of preference, but after nabbing a couple freighters with no kills, and getting -100-something for each, and not that much of a haul, I figured it better to leave them be.   There seems to be no shortage of other traffic.

[khade]

I wonder if you're taking advantage of the night at all, hitting space or scroll lock, by default, will turn on night vision, and human enemies, at least the ones without night vision equipment, have very sucky vision at night.  This allows you to do ambush fighting.  It's not useful against factions that are primarily nonhuman or those that are more military than paramilitary, but it can allow you to take on large groups of enemies with a small crew.

[KiriKaneko]

Even if my girls can see in the dark, I can't, and it just looks like a big black screen and I have to tile scan to find anything

Scorpio your advice makes more sense now. I'm getting positive scores on civ ship raids, probably more just for splashing them right now. I thought it was -400 on progroms before mutant alliance -1000 after, I didnt realise you meant ignore the progroms before mutant alliance, and then land and take off after mutant alliance

[nrafield]

You HAVE to use the nightvision button for night missions, otherwise all night missions are just gonna be a vanilla XCOM nightmare. This will also make you realize what the power of night ops outfit for your gals is.

[KiriKaneko]

Oh wow, I tried this and it works amazingly! Wish I had known this before, are there any other hotkeys I should know about?

[legionof1]

There is a "hawtkeys" bootypedia entry that covers most of the important ones. Although there are multiple functions not well documented. The fact that the engine and the mod are constantly evolving leaves something to be desired in terms of a manual.

[Solarius Scorch]

Man, the Pedia has an entire on night vision...

Or is it unlockable now?