Author Topic: The OpenXcom Files: Tips and Tricks!  (Read 33925 times)

Offline HT

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Re: The OpenXcom Files: Tips and Tricks!
« Reply #15 on: June 10, 2020, 10:50:42 am »
Lol, these are some underhanded but effective ways to use dogs. For regular missions, it is better to bring Scout AIs than dogos then, right? What about monster hunts? I tend to bring at least one dog here because their melee attack will be used somewhat (unless the monster happens to have ranged attacks of some sort, then they're used to take cover and try to flank the enemy).

I noticed you can theoretically improve a dog's psychic power capabilities, but is it worth it? Can dogs be even mind-controlled by aliens?

Offline betatester

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Re: The OpenXcom Files: Tips and Tricks!
« Reply #16 on: June 10, 2020, 11:49:08 am »
Once my dog was mind controlled, he had the lowest psi strength of the team.
Forgot to mention but still true never ever bring motion detection grenade (except perhaps against ninjas, vengeance after the dog death)
« Last Edit: June 10, 2020, 03:26:48 pm by betatester »

Offline Mrvex

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Re: The OpenXcom Files: Tips and Tricks!
« Reply #17 on: June 13, 2020, 01:53:39 am »
I have upgraded my original post with more stuff.
And i discovered there is 20 000 character limit, to cram more tips in i spend like half an hour of culling words.

Offline Mrvex

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Re: The OpenXcom Files: Tips and Tricks!
« Reply #18 on: June 14, 2020, 01:13:48 pm »
Part 2 of my tips

35) Learn weapon silluetes, or atleast this one.

This is heavy plasma.


This thing will one hit KO most of your units in most cases and it has really large damage output, pretty much only tanks, sectopods and juggernaut power armour users can even think about surviving a single hit. This will be the thing massacring most of your troops and you will encounter it alot.

36) Damage and armour numbers
This is really important to remember so you know if your soldiers can take a hit from the enemy or not.

Lets look at heavy tactical suit


Due to how armour works in old XCOM's compared to XCOM 1 and 2, if weapon cannot hurt you, it wont. It wont cause chip damage.
You also need to know that weapons have a RNG damage spread. So weapons always do more or less damage than is written in ufopedia

Tactical suit will be the first armour where you will see constant bullet reflections and 0 damage taken. Cult missions will become extremely easy with this.
It has 32 frontal armour, so a weapon that does 32 or less damage per hit wont do any damage (No matter the type) unless it rolls for higher damage. But it also has 65% kinetic resistance so the actual treshold for bullet damage is higher.  You can safely say that only sniper rifles, rocket launchers and armour piercing weapons like cannons can punch through. Pistols, smg's and shotguns wont even dent this thing.

37) Quickdraw and belt slots on the inventory requires the smallest TU to draw from.
Backpack has alot of space, but taking stuff from it takes more TU than from belt or quickdraw. Quickdraw is perfect for pistols, clips or melee weapons. As it leaves you with enough TU to shoot, or reload and then shoot.

38) Sanity
While for most of the game, if you dont take too long to finish a map. You shouldnt have a problem. But in case of low sanity but your troops are still needed. There are ciggies (Golden Dragons) or combat drugs (Nobelons) you can give to your troops to boost their sanity. But this takes a toll on their health so use this only in emergency. Low sanity degrades combat stats and makes them more vulnerable to panic, you dont want that when facing aliens who can one shot your troops from behind.

39) Stay a while...and listen
Do you hear doors slamming , UFO doors opening ? The wooden door slamming means that there is alien outside somewhere....

40) Mechanical units are repaired instantly when you return from a base.
Since tanks and drones arent living being, repairs are done by XCOM mechanics extremely quickly. So even if you bring home a tank with 10 HP remaining, mechanics will weld it back together within hours. This really means that you should use your tanks as cannon fodder since they are reusable.

41) Alot of armours and vehicles can be repaired in workshop if you lose them in combat.
Most high-end armors and vehicles if destroyed/soldier is slain in it will leave a broken wreck of whatever remains. You can, for a small fee repair them to fully functional state in the workshop.

42) Force fire
In case you dont know, if you hold CTRL before you order an attack. The soldier will shoot, even if there is something (or someone) in the way. This is useful if you are shooting at somebody in cover under the idea that your weapon will destroy the cover. Furniture can be destroyed with most firearms, trees and stumps can be blown away with high caliber weapons and walls, doors and sturdier stuff can be destroyed with lasers or plasma weapons (depending on damage output). This is useful for full auto since it tends to be slightly more effective with time units than trying to use snapshot.

43) Miniguns
While miniguns may look crap, they are not. You might be put off when you see that your attacks have like 15-25% chance to hit but few things to consider
A) Miniguns fire in large volleys
B) They only take 5% armour damage reduction. So they pretty much ignore armour up to the heaviest foes.
C) To put it bluntly, in this XCOM, you can miss +100% hits, but you will also hit low chance hits more often that you would expect. Especially miniguns seems to make it the most noticable when you mow down 4 dudes on the other side of the map  Minigun is, despite being a large weapon god-tier close range weapons if you shoot it one title away at enemy since you will hit and it will hurt alot. Majority of the game's enemies will die in one volley, only the toughest and largest can think of walking it off. The blackops minigun for example does 35 damage a bullet, multiplied by 15. So thats 525 damage if all bullets hit.  (But it will be more or less due to damage scattering).

44) Orange, stationary dots
At some point you will encounter them. Intel says its large and at 0 speed. This "UFO" wont lift off and you can assault it with no problem.
Though, if you do, depending your tech level, prepare for one of the hardest fight in the game.
Why ?
Spoiler:
Well this isnt UFO, but rather MiB base. Once you will go down the assault ramp you will be assaulted by rocket launchers, psionics, tanks, Sectopods, laser weapons, plasma grenades and accelerator weapons. Well thats quite alot so lets go through that all

Well if you havent fought flying enemies before, then you will encounter them here. Men in Black stormtroopers will hover around the map, often armed with rocket launchers. Make sure to get their corpse in one piece since you can use it for your troops.

Since Men in Black are Ayy helpers they will be armed with plasma grenades

Tanks ? Yes, MiB will deploy 0-3 tanks around their base. They are the same as XCOM's laser tanks. So that means they will one shot most of your dudes and will easily wreck your own tanks.
Sectopods are just a cherry on top, also MiB version of it. Prepare for absolute hell if one of them just stomps out of a garrage and one shots your tank and 2 other guys.  Use rocket launchers or miniguns to attack their backs where their armour is the weakest.

Psionics, base can have a psi-trooper who even has a shield.

Accelerator weapons are step up from blackops weapons you been using. They do more damage. Sucks to not have the heaviest armour to tank it. And most of the enemy here will be armed with Blackops weapons or Human-grade laser weapons so unless you have heavy tritanium tactical armour for your whole squad. Dont even bother.

MiB troops are quite tough (endurance wise) but the powerarmour operative takes the cake. These bulky guys in black have one of the best armours in the game (Only Juggernaut power armour is better) and after you will see them eat laser tank blasts one after other you might panic. But if you do kill one of them with explosives or hits from behind you can retrofit the armour for XCOM.

You might see enemy dogs around the base, though they are nothing when compared to the Human troops you face.

And then comes the base itself. The welcoming party is quite something already but you might find the base daunting too. Especially if you discover that the basement has a tank like doing circles in the hallways. Its also made as a maze but i said fuck that and i use explosives to make my path. And then the final room with more enemies (usually the commander and some guards).

You do get alot of loot from this and alot of ratings for the council. Also btw, dont really bother that much with live captures because at this moment, you cannot permamently destroy MiB.



45) Speaking of curve balls the mod can throw at you, here some more

"Clinic raid"
Spoiler:
At some point you will encounter these clinics, if you done hybrid convoys then you will be familiar with the enemies you can encounter there. This is absolue save scum fest because even leaving your assault ramp will be difficult as you are attacked by a large number of hybrids and Advent agents armed with plasma grenades and laser weapons. This one is absolute hell because plasma grenades will be landing between your troops and constant laser fire aint gona make things easy. Having a tank helps alot since they can atleast take hits from laser weapons but plasma grenades will destroy them in few hits. Then the clinic itself, once you like killed 20 dudes outside you can enter it and mop it up, prepare for short range blasts from chemlaunchers and chemrifles while hybrids are trying to mind rape your troops. Though this mission gives very good loot since you can reuse laser rifles, heavy lasers for your troops and you get a really large council rating from this due to the number or enemies killed and loot gained

"Early visitors"
Spoiler:
Even before 1999, you can, on rare ocassions get a landed UFO, if you can manage to capture it then you will get a massive leg up on the tech race. There is a rarer variation of this that military managed to down it. This mission is hard because you can only bring 2-4-6 guys and you have no clue about their psionic power so its roll of a dice. Though sectoids arent exactly tanky so shotguns should suffice.

Hunting party
Spoiler:
Another early game alien mission. You will encounter Anthropods here, armed with warp weapons. If you can kill them all, you can get alien biochemistry tech which unlocks the dart rifle, which is chemical based non lethal weapon.

Arctic Horrors
Spoiler:
This is one of a time mission, have you seen the Thing (movie) ? Well, this mission alone justifies the paranoid flamethrower in your car.  You will get a autopsy from the metamorph and that autopsy gives massive council rating boost, pretty much so much you can do nothing for the rest of the month and still get positive opinion from them. Whats so hard ? Well Metamorphs are tanky and they will turn any victim to one of them and ofc there are civilians on the map, a good warmup for Chrysallids. While they can be shot to pieces with shotguns, it will take alot of buckshots so its better to one tap them with flamethrower.

Your first cult HQ
Spoiler:
It will be a massacre, but victory means promotion for XCOM. Red Dawn is the easiest to do when compared to Exalt, Dagon and Lotus. Exalt is well armed, Dagon has psionics and really shitty HQ map with little cover and Lotus has ninja who are invisible unless you are close enough to them, that paired up with your shitty armour means you will lose soldiers

HQ of the other organisation
Spoiler:
Syndicate HQ is one of the most brutal faction HQ's. For the simple reason that your troops will need to psi-disguise as Syndicate personal and that means you will lose your armour, at the point when you face Syndicate i assume you will have Cyber armour and maybe few powerarmour pieces stolen from MiB. And this close range fight will be a bloodbath, a rocket tag gameplay as both sides will be in the range of one or two shotting each other with the weapons you have. And theres what, like 50-70 enemies in that base ?  And aside from supersoldiers, soldiers, minotaurs and CEO's you can also find the security mech. I think it took me 3 hours to do it with save scumming because those casulties were relentless and those were my best troops i had.

X Ship
Spoiler:
This mission is brutal, +70 enemies on open place. What i am talking about ? About the Cyberweb ship HQ in X Dimension, this mission will be bordeline unplayable without Sectopods and tanks because you cannot bring your Tritanium or Cyber armour here because the atmosphere is unbreatheable so you need enviroment suits which DONT protect against lasers and warp attacks. So tanks and Sectopods will need to soak fire from +20 enemies at once. I did it with sectopods with no problem but not sure about tanks having same results.

46) Kitsune, Osprey and Ironfist have unique advantages over other landing vehicles
Ironfist is heavy infantry transport with staircase, so its possible to shoot explosives through that to the outside.
Kitsune though takes the cake because you can walk under it. This means you are protected against grenades and other explosives thrown in arc. Osprey has this too.
Skymarshall also is slightly better at dealing with landing zone ambushes because it has side doors you can camp or use to scatter your troops.

47) Training your troops
At some point you will realize that you have a bunch of really good guys and gals but the ever looming threat of losing them is ever present. But the rest of your units are quite crap. Like 30-40% chance to hit someone standing in front of them with something like Blackops rifle. To prevent disasters you need to constantly train new units with "Milk runs". Missions against monsters are a really good way of training firing accuracy because they are melee (most of the time atleast) so its just you taking potshots at them from safe distance.
This is also why you should reconsider researching
Spoiler:
The Final Solution, as that will over time eradicate creature missions, forcing you either to train your rookies against Aliens or high-end Human factions


To add some safety, you should spice up the rookie squad with few elite troops acting as sergeants, just in case...

Creatures will be a good way to grind up aim and throwing accuracy, cultists will be a great practise with melee weapons because you can actually survive melee attacks from them.

Training should be done either with Blackops weapons (Cheap and effective) or turbolaser weapons (Infinite ammo). Once you have access to Stormtrooper armour (Or any flying one) creature missions will become impossible to lose.

Dont forget to have the gym occupied, making 2 gyms so you can have 20 agents (And dogs) training at the same time can help and you can demolish them once their training is complete. Also check out possible upgrades for your troops so they have the best stats possible.

48) Enemy/Allies will pick up weapons if they lost them for any reason.
They will either try to pick up their own weapon but they can grab anything on the ground. Civilians will pick up weapons off the ground too. If you want to save as many civilians as possible, you can, pack up a backpack with weapons you will drop in a city so civilians can pick them up and shoot. Oh and civilians will pick up stuff from the pile in XCOM's craft if they wander in it. I saw a woman picking up a rocket launcher and walking out of my Kitsune to one shot 3 cultists across the street. Or a engineer who walked to Kitsune and walked back out with Blackops SMG in hand. Not sure if there are any preferences or random. Not enough data to make any claim yet.


49) Sectopods
Sectopods have the highest armour in the game. So much so that if you get one, he can pretty much solo Alien base missions because not even heavy plasma can even touch his health pool. The only thing that can destroy him are heavy gauss cannons or flank shots from strong laser weapons. One way to quickly destroy a sectopod are Laser tanks, because laser does whooping 120 damage a hit, you can destroy a sectopod from behind in one burst fire.
And yes, once you get a wreck, you can rebuild it and slot your AI to it. Game will become extremely easy.

50) Some robotic enemies will explode when killed, destroying their loot/corpse.
Certain robotic enemies will self destruct when shot to pieces. Most notable are cyberdisks who will happily take out all of its comrades that are standing nearby.
But, if you destroy them with explosives, it will drop a wreck instead.

51) You can toss weapons, bodies and items across distances.
Well how is that even useful you might say ? Its very specific
  • You can reinforce your men with supplies at different elevation's quickly, iek Marius, throw that magazine at me

  • You can throw away confiscated weapons somewhere inaccessible, like when you are fighting sectoids you can either stuff their weapons to your backback or just toss them on the top of the UFO or top of the tree

So its abit specific and gimmicky way to skip some TU's steps

52) MAGMA Corporation quests
You will meet this corporation one way or the other and they can provide XCOM some of the harder hitting weapons in the game and cool gadgets in general. Though some live captures and particular items researched are a needed for these "quests" to spawn. These missions are, once you research the outcome of the mission, one of a time. But they are bitch hard and require good gear and manpower to pull off.

The first mission you can get is by researching live infestor (And the 2 lesser variants) you can catch one in major infestations. This will spawn mission at some point. Dont bother with this mission unless you can haul atleast 8 dudes here armed with miniguns and shotguns and atleast armoured vest /w vest with a shield. This mission gives 2 rewards, tactical implants and heavy shotgun. The tactical implant is the important thing here.
This is a producable item that can be used to upgrade your troops (Sort of like bio upgrades) but most importantly it lets you build Cyber Armour, which is pretty much an upgrade of Tritanium Suit which has no penalties to movement and gives a slight boost to reaction fire at cost of being only slightly worse at stopping bullets (by 5%)  and this armour will be probably the longest used across the game because its just good. Before you whip out power armours for everyone. Your entire squads will be composed of Cyber Armour troops. Oh and also Cyber armour only takes 80% plasma damage (Tritanium suit takes full 100%).

« Last Edit: December 16, 2020, 09:34:39 am by Mrvex »

Offline HT

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Re: The OpenXcom Files: Tips and Tricks!
« Reply #19 on: June 14, 2020, 04:10:34 pm »
Part 2 of my tips

35) Learn weapon silluetes, or atleast this one...

Dunno if you know about this, but you can get a close-up of ANY unit's paper-doll and their gear on-hand by clicking on them with the middle button of your mouse. Obviously, while the picture will tell you a lot, if you don't know much about their gear or the unit itself the help is limited, but it is better than guessing from the battlescape's sprite, which is not always accurate.

Unfortunately this trick doesn't work if you don't have a mouse, such as the case with the Android's version.

Offline anothrgamer1234

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Re: The OpenXcom Files: Tips and Tricks!
« Reply #20 on: June 19, 2020, 05:53:21 pm »
To follow up with the mention of the Cult of Dagon HQ mission, they'll also have alien backup- Deep Ones, Gillmen, and Gilldogs. Most of the Deep Ones only have melee weapons, but a couple of them have sonic pistols- which will hurt a lot at the time you're likely to do this mission.  That said, even their spears and hatchets do a lot more damage than they'd expect and those Gilldogs have a way of blending in with all the scenery.

Also, capturing and interrogating an enemy will give you a profile of its armor rating and damage multipliers. Since the wiki is currently unavailable, this is the only way you can get that information! Always make sure to stun and capture anything you don't recognize, especially since some enemy types don't appear much and you might not get another chance to find one for a long time (or at all in some cases like after terminating a cult). I suggest electric clubs and the like for stunning reliably, you'd be surprised how many common enemies resist stun damage from tonfas and even the dart rifle/pistol rounds.

Update: The wiki is available now so you can check the combat analyses without needing to interrogate first, but having a reference available at any time is still useful and the wiki hasn't been updated with the newer enemy types yet.
« Last Edit: June 30, 2020, 06:43:54 pm by anothrgamer1234 »

Offline tarkalak

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Re: The OpenXcom Files: Tips and Tricks!
« Reply #21 on: June 27, 2020, 11:39:45 am »
    I guess i will chip in with one thicc of a post.
This is spoiler free unless you peek at it

...
10) Your starting position matters !
Cults have bases around the world, most vehicles have limited range of operation.
Bad spots
South America - Too far away from Europe and Asia
Africa - No cult starts in Africa
Arctic - Too far away from cults

Good spots
Europe - Somewhat central access to most places of the world, i had my base in Athens, Greece. But will slightly struggle with reaching the US mainland
Asia, Japan - This is a really good spot, you somewhat have of a access to US to get Exalt personal, Red Dawn and Lotus are at your doorstep but Europe is harder.
The starting position in Japan is also essential since you can reach the Red Dawn HQ with larger- capacity vehicle like the Helicopter so its not 4vs+60.

Once you have a hefty income make new bases to cover other continents too. Having a base in Europe and US is suggested so you can launch mission from there too to take out the cults
...

The best place for first base is the North Pole. Most of the landmass on earth is on the Northern hemisphere, and as you noted the southern parts (Africa, South America, etc) have fewer missions. That way most of the early missions are relatively close by. Then in the mid game the Helicopter and Dragonfly can cover half of the planet, so with a second base on the south pole you can cover the whole planet with only two bases.

As another note you can take the Light pistol and Spypistol on all undercover missions except the Beach missions. You can carry the Crossbow to the beach instead.[/list]

Offline Mrvex

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Re: The OpenXcom Files: Tips and Tricks!
« Reply #22 on: June 28, 2020, 09:37:52 pm »
Part 3 of my tips (Yes i hit the 20 000 character limit again)

53) Synth-Muscle Suit is great for new troops
This is a armour you can make by extracting muton corpses. This armour turns your troops in to superhumans by giving them large bonuses to time units, strenght and melee accuracy. Normally you would want coveralls for your new troops when hunting monsters but this thing replaces it by a long shot. Even new troops will be able to fight at close range with good hit chance and if you give them something like a Tritanium sword they will kill most enemies in the game in one or two slices. This is a perfect armour for melee combat and it provides good enough protection from damage though its not exactly bullet proof. But it should stop low caliber weapons.

Once you will get underground missions, it is actually a good idea to give everyone synthsuits and turn them to samurai warriors because its not like you will shoot that much and you will one or two shot anything with reaction fire anyway.


Synth suit gives +20% melee accuracy, this turns even the biggest noobs you have in to having 50-70% chance to hit and that hit will hurt alot. One of the drawbacks of melee is that if you do fail to kill them (Iek missing 5, 40% attacks in row) you just better save scum because what happens after that isnt nice. With +60% chance to hit, even if one hit lands it might kill the enemy on the spot. And once you will get really good melee troops you will be able to mow down people way more quickly than any firearm in the game.
Lets do some math to see actual numbers
Tritanium sword will be your to go to weapon you can mass produce, katana's and eventually energy melee weapons are also good candidates. But lets look at the sword alone.
Base line damage is 50 cutting, + 0.6 * Strenght + 0.2 Accuracy

Lets look at mr. Gerrit, who has 80 strenght and 86 melee accuracy
50 + 48 (0.6 * 80) + 17 (0.2 * 86) = 115 damage a hit. Thats almost as much as rocket blast of cutting damage (Cutting in general is anti-armour, not many armour types protect from it)
At cost of 12 TU a slice, Gerrit has 89 TU's, that means 7 possible stabbs, if all hit (86% to hit), then Gerrit can produce 805 points od damage in one turn. Gerrit is also a scrub (4 months in service), but synthmuscle armour turned him in to a terminator


54) Melee weapons have flat TU costs, firearms and other items have percentage based TU costs.
TLDR you can do alot of stabs with melee weapons with high TU soldiers.

55) Floater autopsy gives you the option to extract grav modules from them.
Unlike other autopsies which are generally useless (Shoot them till they die, autopsies in nutshell, also this x creature is vulnerable to flamethrowers is also quite common) this autopsy gives you access to flying suits which you will want. I can assure you. Though before you can make armoured (And i mean really armoured versions) that will take some time too.

56) Research captured ayy Engineers and Leaders last
Given the shitty in my opinion way of aquisition of essential end game tech (iek anti matter contaiment, delta radiation) which is a giant RNG rullete.
Let me explain, as you capture enemy aliens, you can capture different types of them, you can capture Engineers, Navigators, Soldiers, Medics, Commanders/Leaders and some elite variants. By slapping them on a chair and screaming at them for multiple hours and days you can extract RNG based reward from them.

Soldiers have few reward options so you can start selling them to the council's own funhouses once you cannot question them furthermore.
Medics give you random creature autopsy, so you can know that this creature dies when you shoot it with shotgun at point blank, or that its vulnerable to fire. You can also get autopsies of enemies you havent seen yet. If short on change, Medics follow soldiers to the workshop of information and joy.

Navigators give you intel on Alien ship types. This isnt as useful till you get hyperwave decoding tech which is a late game tech and even then its not that useful to know that. That that UFO over there is Harvester. The only thing you have to look for are "Terror Ships" and Troop transports and you dont need to know from navigators what these ships do. You know that if you dont shoot them down you are facing a possible Alien Terror mission... or XCOM base defence.

Engineers and Leaders/Commanders give the best rewards for XCOM, mostly essential tech you must have to advance. But they can roll for other stuff, stuff like ship types or enemy types. This is a total waste of a capture. So to maximise the chance to roll for useful tech, integoriate as many non engineers/leaders as you can before you start the questioning of them. So you eliminate the trashy rolls as low as possible.

Rather than this meta gaming for essential-to-progress tech i rather be raiding alien bases for data banks, or other major cults/faction HQ's but i have doubts this will change. Alien data slates are also a way to get good tech but these are very rare.

Note: Use mind reader to check out which sectoid is which, other alien types (well most of the time) have visually distinct roles, sectoids look all the same

57) Its irrelevant if you cannot cram a HWP through tiny corridors in 2 phase missions.
Sometimes you will be in a mission which is 2 staged and its in something like the caves. You might be tempted to simply get 4 or 8 dudes instead of 1-2 HWP's but consider this, if you kill everything on the map, your squad will proceed, with HWP's.
Not sure how did they manage to cram a sectopod through 1 title thin passage through multiple staircases but i guess XCOM called for a magician and he made these 2 planks of tritanium go *puff* and then he summoned them at the destination. Or they dismantled them and constructed them over there.

Just saying that some 2 stage missions can be brutal without something to tank the enemies on the other side.  One mission against doomsday preppers made me really happy that i did bring those tanks to the caves since now they were tanking quite damaging attacks that would quickly kill my troops even in tritanium armour.

58) Have soldiers walk in two pairs most of the time.
While grouping up can bait explosive attacks, there are benefits in massed combat at some point you will have armours strong enough to survive explosives just fine. By the time you get tritanium suits frag grenades shouldnt even dent your dudes.
One soldier can always crouch and the other can fire over his soldier but actually why you would want for them to travel in pairs is simple:

A) So they can medkit each other (Healing spray and gell can self medicate, but the large medkit requires someone else to use)
B) If one of them gets knocked out his comrade can pull him away from danger and like toss him behind a wall or fence.
C) If one of them is mind controlled, the other guy will engage in close range combat with him, either knocking him cold if he has something like a power armour. AI loves to blast your troops with MC'ed troops at point blank. But otherwise his comrade will foil his attacks against rest of your team.
D) So they can cover each other's back armour, literally. Infantry armours have weaker backside armour but if you slap two guys back to back, any attack against either of them would hit their frontal armour. This makes the difference between few days in infirmary and taking no damage from attack. This is most notable with Cyber and Tritanium suit which will easily tank balistic weapons from front but a hit to the back could do enough damage to overpower the damage treshold.

59) Utilize the fact that projectiles have to travel to its target.
Compared to modern XCOM 1 and 2, using obstacles to catch projectiles is possible.... or other people as meatshields.

But this becomes practical with heavy weapon platforms. Just like in real life, simply advance behind your tank and let it absorb attacks indended to hurt your soldiers. Sectopod takes the cake because  its the largest XCOM unit in the game with massive hitbox and massive armour.

60) Turbolaser weapons
Turbolaser weapons are step up from laser weapons, they deal more damage and have more weapon types covered. However the best features about Turbolaser weapons is its infinite ammo and decent accuracy.
Infinite ammo will turn this weapon type in to the longest lasting weapon type you will be using and this is a sort of weapon that is perfect for long missions like HQ raids or base asaults. And its damage output is like double the Blackops weapons with good accuracy on top. For example, Scatter Turbolaser (Laser minigun) deals 50 damage per hit and fires in a volley of 15 beams. Most human enemies have 50-120 HP. This is how you can mow down 5-12 people in a single volley if they line up and the damage it can do is no joke. This goes for most turbolaser weapons that they will kill most enemies in roughly two hits.

One of the drawbacks however is that they are very heavy. Its not impossible to use without power armour but dont expect to carry something else. For example, Scatter Turbolaser has weight of 51.  This means only your strongest dudes in your squad can carry it in something like heavy tactical armour. With cyberarmour you should be better off, it has better protection that tritanium armour but doesnt penalize you that much with carry weight. Turbolaser rifle has weight of 16 so thats not a problem but the hard hitting variations like heavy turbolaser or scatter will require strong hands to wield but boy they are worth it. Especially the scatter laser which actually has solid accuracy even on medium range.

61) Stuffing aliens to your backpack
If you havent noticed, you can walk over an alien and stuff it in your soldiers backpack, yes, an agent will grab a sectoid and shows him in the pocket.
Well, that sounds pointless, but actually its not.
Any item in your soldiers inventory will be turned over at the base. Including living enemies. So since there are plenty of research items barred behind research of one person then... why just not grab him, get everyone to EVAC and GTFO ?.
The best example is getting infestor, you need him for progress and he is...dangerous at the stage of the game you get to meet him. So why not just shoot him till he drops unconcious, send the largest TU agent over him, stuff him in your pocket and return and leave. You got what you came for and you skipped a hectic fight on top of it.

But what if the alien wakes up ?.
Well, he will drop on the title next to the agent and will resume its existence on the field. If suddenly a sectoid gone puff from your inventory, then he is walking somewhere, trying to find his weapon.
You can also throw bodies so your soldiers can simply fetch a body, even if there is like a broken catwalk between them.

62) Pre-Priming items
During inventory screen when you are about to touch down, you can pre-prime items by right clicking on them. So you can save TU and give your troops already primed grenades that can be thrown at turn 1.
Though be careful to not prime something like a dynamite and leave it on the weapon pile since it will explode in your craft. Also if a soldier is having a primed explosive in his inventory and he goes  KO or gets killed, his items will explode in his inventory, finishing him off and also possibly destroying everyone around him.
You can leave preprimed smoke grenade in your weapon pile on purpose so it gives your men cover at the start. You can also activate flashlights and leave it on the weapon pile so you get hefty line of sight around your craft, though dont do this when fighting cultists since it gives them a clear shot at your men.
Prematurely preparing explosives is very useful if you know that you will be ambushed at your landing site.



« Last Edit: December 16, 2020, 09:40:56 am by Mrvex »

Offline Solarius Scorch

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Re: The OpenXcom Files: Tips and Tricks!
« Reply #23 on: June 30, 2020, 11:38:27 am »
More very good advice!

Offline HT

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Re: The OpenXcom Files: Tips and Tricks!
« Reply #24 on: June 30, 2020, 03:46:11 pm »
Regarding getting alien engineers, IIRC in previous versions Chtonic Mini-Bases were a good place to "farm" aliens. While the xenos themselves look identical, they're not well-suited fighting in caves, so it was easy to capture them en masse and hoard soldiers, engineers and what have you. Commanders were a thing as well, but that was removed in one of the updates.

Offline anothrgamer1234

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Re: The OpenXcom Files: Tips and Tricks!
« Reply #25 on: June 30, 2020, 07:02:06 pm »
More on the Cult HQ missions since I only really talked about Church of Dagon.

Red Dawn's HQ is mostly simple enough- it's a big labrynith of a military base, but many enemies will come to you and there's only a couple entry points they can emerge from (as well as a couple of big holes perfect for chucking grenades into). I say "mostly" because there's also three armored cars that show up alarmingly close to your position. They're heavily armored, have lots of health, and their machine guns can fire an enormous amount of shots each turn which will shred your troops easily. If you haven't gotten Promotion III (and subsequently the Rocket Launcher or something else that can put out enough damage per turn to get past their armor) or had the good luck to pick up both an RPG launcher and anti-tank RPGs (it has to be the anti-tank RPGs, the normal ones do minimal damage against armor), you'll need to get creative. Sniper rifles are a surprisingly good countermeasure due to their anti-armor properties (especially if you're lucky enough to pick up a  M83 Barrett), but in a pinch miniguns or chucking high explosives also work. Get familiar with the map, you'll see it again in several other significant missions, such as the Cyberweb heist and the spider-filled base.

EXALT's base is a big building with lots of narrow corridors and many floors. Shotguns will be helpful since you'll be fighting in close range a lot. The Brainer uses some psionic abilities, but there's only one  and it's not overly tough. Just watch out for the occasional guy with an RPG, rockets in a narrow hallway are never good news. Consider bringing Nobelon too, sanity will be an issue if a straggler wanders off and you can't find him.

Black Lotus's base also has a bunch of corridors, but it's only a couple of floors in size and less difficult to get lost in.  It does, however, have a bunch of hidden doors that the enemy will use to ambush you from, so watch for that. The Assassins are definitely a pain, but Proximity Grenades and mines will deal with them if you put them in intersections they'll need to walk through in order to reach you. As usual, the Avatar is the most dangerous target- Stun weapons are most effective at bypassing her shield, which will otherwise soak up enormous amounts of damage. Even then you'll want to focus a lot of fire, she's got lots of health and quite a few resistances for good measure. Don't forget to capture a Mandarin here, as far as I know this is the only place that they can be found consistently.
« Last Edit: July 01, 2020, 11:56:52 pm by anothrgamer1234 »

Offline tarkalak

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Re: The OpenXcom Files: Tips and Tricks!
« Reply #26 on: July 07, 2020, 07:14:47 pm »
The Scout Tank has 5 anticamo, which means that it can see the Black Lotus Ninjas from 9 tiles away rather than the 4 for everyone else. It is a good counter to them if you can keep it behind hard cover on the enemy turns.

Offline ontherun

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Re: The OpenXcom Files: Tips and Tricks!
« Reply #27 on: January 18, 2022, 03:56:45 pm »
So me too wanted to guve a try so installed 2.2, currently in the very end of april 1997, unlocked and building the intel center but the rela deal will be to raid a cult safehouse, it is a though battle!

Cults spawn on each earth continents, so you should get an idea of what you will figt. Oh and in that month also see my forst couple of UFOs flyng around

Offline Slow

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Re: The OpenXcom Files: Tips and Tricks!
« Reply #28 on: August 16, 2022, 05:05:45 pm »
What is the best weapon to kill zombies? I keep swarmed by them, even with a van. Fat zombies are esp hard, it takes 5-6 shots from 44 Magnum to make them 'sleep'. Mp5 is even worse. Is there a solution to kill them fast?

Offline Juku121

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Re: The OpenXcom Files: Tips and Tricks!
« Reply #29 on: August 16, 2022, 08:37:58 pm »
Shotguns, perhaps. Zombies have little armour. Although they do have some and shotguns are very sensitive to any amount of armour.

I did some snap shot testing vs Fat Zombies, and got this:
  • Magnum: ~6 hits, so ~1.5 turns and a reload unless you hit every shot. ~2 turns to kill a Fat Zombie (TTKFZ).
  • PA shotgun: ~4 hits. ~2 TTKFZ.
  • KS 23-M: ~3 hits. ~1 TTKFZ. Needs a reload afterwards, so more like 1.3.
  • 'Shotgun' shotgun: ~3 hits, ~1.5 turns.
  • BO shotgun: ~2 hits (probably due to a more accurate soldier hitting with more pellets). Let's pull it back to ~3 hits, that's still ~1 TTKFZ.
  • BO Auto-shotgun: Auto-shot, ~2 hits from 3 (again the accuracy thing?). Less than half a TTKFZ.
  • Thrasher shotgun: Almost guaranteed to one-shot. Has autofire to make that virtually a certainty. Needs a reload afterwards. About half a TTKFZ.
  • Winchester shotgun: about the same as 'Shotgun' and BO shotgun.
  • BO CAWS: ditto. A bit less reloading, though.
  • Light Cannon: ~2 hits, ~2/3 TTKFZ.
  • Heavy Cannon: One-shots, less reloading than a Thresher. ~1/3 TTKFZ.
  • Auto-Cannon: ~2 hits, autofire kills very reliably. ~1/3 TTKFZ.
Edit: Added some more shotguns:
  • 2B shotgun: ~2-3 hits. ~1 TTKFZ.
  • Sawed-off: ~2 hits, autofire kills but not guaranteed to. Surprisingly good at non-face-eating range. ~0.6 TTKFZ.
  • Small shotgun: ~3 hits, frequent reloads. Surprisingly good at non-face-eating range. ~1 TTKFZ.
  • Pancor Jackhammer: Pretty much the same as the BO auto-shotgun, so less than half TTKFZ.
All these results are probably skewed due to varying soldier accuracy. So most shotguns kill a Fat Zombie in 2-3 shots.
/edit

Since you're mentioning vans, I doubt you have access to the better shotguns and shotgun-like weapons (Threshers, auto-shotguns, cannon buckshot ammo, etc). Zombies take double damage from fire, so flamers are probably better, though the early flamer kinda sucks. Let's see what early-game fire weapons do:
  • Agri-flamer: ~12 hits. ~2.5 TTKFZ.
  • Flamer: ~2 auto-shots. ~0.7 TTKFZ.
  • Incendiary grenade&Flare pistol: Something like a dozen. Useless as a damage-dealer.
Fire does have the advantage of corralling Zombies if you leave them a path to your soldiers that's not on fire.


TLDR: Shotguns, especially the better shotguns. 'Shotgun' shotgun comes very early if you want it to, Thrashers can be had as soon as Promo I, BO weapons are around Promo II. Depends a lot on what missions you get and how you manage them. Flamers and incediaries to block zombies with walls of fire, although a van is probably a bit too small to pull that off well.
« Last Edit: August 19, 2022, 01:38:52 am by Juku121 »