Tactical Fighting Strategies.

[Satatik]

So, how do you go 'Tactical'? I mean clearing rooms, covering all directions with equal fire power; you know being strategic.

 

I move slowly in 5 man teams, making sure everyone is covered in all directions, and moving in leapfrog.

 

For clearing rooms, I usualy have 2 guys back from the door with rifles aiming at it from behind cover, and 2 more at the door, 1 a grenadier.

 

And also one covering the squads rear(rear guard).

 

I open the door toss in a grenade;(or 3) and proceed to shoot from corners, if its clear, I move in like delta force does. Its quick effeicent and covers all angles, thats why i use it.

 

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|x         x|    
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|x___  _x|

 

A 5 man team stacks up, The front first tosses a grenade, then rushes to the left corner, then to the top left corner.

 

Then the second goes to the right bottom corner, then to the top; And FAST.

Then the other 2 take the bottome left and right corners, while the other 1 guards the rear.

 

So how do you do it?

 

EDIT: Damn code, it supposed to be a box.

[Aralez]

Believe it or not, i use the same tactic. But only for a short time now, i have to admit. In the "old" days i used a 4-unit-firepower team(in a block) and the other three were covering them from a small distance (1 in front, 2 behind).

 

Then the new ComboMod arrived and i had to use your tactic as the other one was a bit to dangerous for the units in the "block". One Popper or one grenade and you were toasted. AND if you keep the team spread out the Popper uses his less dangerous bite attack, which can save your units lifes.

 

If you use the Tough-Alien mod (like i do) the old trick where you waited around the corner for an enemy isn't as perfect as it used to be, too. You have to use larger distances and other weapons as the enemy doesn't fall down dead as easily as before.

 

At the start of my UFOAM time i used the whole team as one big unit to kill the enemy, not a very clever tactic, but worked in the first few missions. (until i was attacked with explosives)

[Satatik]

Oh and the tactical useage of grenades; How do you use them.

 

I had a squad SURROUNDED on all sides by a truckload of transgenents, 2 of my men were down and more were pretty much pinned down. Cover behind trucks buildings....

 

Realy intense.

 

My guy with heavy armor ran behind a school bus when he saw a REALY dangerous tranny, (forgot what kind) and without the thing being visible he tossed a he nade OVER the ENITRE lenth of the shoolbus and OWNED 3 trannys....

 

A day to remember

[Aralez]

Grenades are VERY important in this game as you can throw them over objects and stay in cover and they also make a nice damage. However, if you use them as a face-to-face weapon you are dead before you can throw them. This weapon actually has "tactic" written on its cover. Incendiary Grenades can be used to "seal" off a small corridor for a short time and how about the tactic where a reticulan in a corridor is spotted by a unit and chases the human, and just when it enters the room some grenades from your hidden units in cover fall on his head (timing is important here) And don't forget the ability to make new entries in walls and fences with them.

 

If you use the ComboMod, you will get LOTS of other grenades like Toxin-, Plasma or Healing-Grenades (nanotechnology) and the Flashbang and the blinding flare.

[Satatik]

Where can I get this combomod?

[jayohaitchenn]

It's in the downloads section. Or look in the mods forum and look in the topic "Combo Mod 3" or something like that...

[Aralez]

You can get it here: https://www.gamershell.com/download_7252.shtml

 

Beware there is a very small bug in the mod, you can't dress females with the powerarmour atm. This will be fixed in one or two days.

[Satatik]

Sorry about my last post, I meant to add the download in the DL section was down.

 

Back to the origanal topic .

 

So...

 

How do you tacticaly use snipers on higher difficulties?

 

2 man teams? 1 with a Shotty so when the sniper looks around the corner no supprises?

[Aralez]

If possible i like to have a guy with a shotgun or something similar close to them, but usually i leave them alone to cover the others from behind.

 

The download should be up again soon. (and the mod is fixed)

[Raion]

The squaddies run alot when necessary for cover. Line up single file sometimes, spread out in a line across sometimes. Spotters spot the enemy so everyone can fire usually sniper rifles, while carrying other things like shotguns also and extra medkits. I move to edge of buildings first to see if anything is around the corner, step by step, by step. Sometimes they walk other times they run, and sometimes when I feel like it, they march around the city block afterwards before the mission ends. Blow up the mutants growing in the white corpses slime, and shoot almost dead cows, and other things as needed.

 

I mainly move them all together for the most part, waiting for the slow ones to catch up.

Generally, just play the game!

[NickAragua]

Depends on who I'm fighting and where.

 

Outdoors, pretty much the only tactic is to bring a wide variety of weapons, line your guys up, and advance slowly in a firing line.

 

In urban areas, I use a mix of grenade-tossers, shotgun guys and long range rifle guys. If I know I'm outclassed (aliens with rockets, pretty much anything in the early game), I'll set up shotgun and flamethrower ambushes around building corners and use a guy to peek around the corner and maybe fire a shot off to get the aliens to come around the corner. I also make liberal use of the unlimited pineapple grenades so I don't have to put my guys in danger.

 

Indoors, the shotgun is my friend. Everyone carries a backup shotgun that they can switch to, then wait around a corner. A couple of shotgun blasts to the face will fix any alien problem for you. Basically, I corner-hop from room to room using teams of at least two, with a third guy hanging back a little to either help out up front or blast aliens trying to sneak up behind the team.

 

[Edit] Later on, when the aliens have bio armor, rapid-fire rocket launchers, microslug accelerators and deployable plasma turrets, I have about half of my squad on psionics. That way, instead of getting my guys shot up, the aliens shoot each other. [/edit]

[Landon_Fox]

I like to engage the enemy in a way that puts me at an advantage. I see four ways this works.

 

- Shoot an enemy outside his range.

 

- Trade range for damage and use terrain to get close.

 

- Divide and conquer, attack aliens four on one.

 

- Use grenades to shoot from cover of terrain.

 

I try not to rely on grenades because you will not always have terrain obsticles. There are plenty of cars in a city, but if you're in flat desert sand and all you have are fragmentation grenades, you're yiffed. Grenade launchers get you around this problem, but I like to save them for emergencies. Carpet bombing the entrance to your base is sometimes the only way to win a base defense mission, and it really helps on the Russian base too.

 

This leaves us to work with the other three. I've noticed that the AI doesn't seem to like using aimed shot unless the gun doesn't have burst-fire mode. This is a great thing for you! It means that unless the enemy has a gun with insane accuracy, you can use aimed shot to chip away most of the enemy's health before he starts shooting back, even if you both have the same weapon! This only works if you have enough vision to see the enemies far way. Make sure at least one person focuses on scouting.

 

Always make sure you pick off aliens one at a time so they stop doing their damage. Out in the open where everyone has a line of sight, there is no reason not to do this.

 

For short range I like to use shotguns. In truth, submachineguns are better, but that's all that the handguns skill can do. The rifle skill gives you shotguns and longer range rifles as well. You get more options for your stat points so I use it instead. In addition, the shotguns benefit more from the aliens skill because they are aimed shot. However, one shotgun alone may not cut against late game alien hordes. This means we need to learn about ambushing techniques!

 

If you run your guys forward and find three aliens around a corner, you know you're going to take damage while you get ready to fight. The enemies get to pick you off one at a time. That's why advancing in a base is dangerious. But the same thing works against them if you have a little patience.

 

First setup your guys. You want to set them up so the aliens will see them all as soon as he rounds the corner. A diagnal line of soldiers seems to work best for this. Have the one closest to the wall run up to the corner. Make the aliens want to come to you, shoot one in the back if he refuses to take the bait. Once they become aggressive, get back into the line. The aliens will come forward and find four shotguns pointed at their face. That alien is not going to be an alien for much longer. That alien is Ragu Thick and Chunky. And the best part is that aliens aren't big on pattern recognition, so when one alien rounds the corner and ceases to be an alien, the rest won't take the hint!

 

Opening a door should be handled on a case per case basis. If there is only a small room behind the door, pull out your shotguns. Two or three shotgunners opening a door is usually enough to liquify any enemies behind it. If there is a long hall, you may wish to consider an assault rifle or similarly functioning weapon. That way if the alien is close you can use burst fire and if it's down the hallway you can use aimed shot. Pausing to swap weapons while being pelted with bullets is not a good thing.

 

When in doubt, scout. It's better for one soldier to take damage than your entire squad. Speed and hitpoints are the major considerations in a scout. Speed is to run the yiff away when you find the aliens, and hitpoints are so you can survive the bullet barrage. Once the enemies start using area of effect weaponry, this becomes much more important.

 

Speed is vital. Area of effect and damage over time are the most dangerious attacks in the game! And both can be avoided entirely if your soldiers and your reactions as a player are quick. React with a pause as soon as you hear the launch sound. Predict where the missile will hit and move all affected soldiers. If you wear heavy armor you are yiffed the second one rocket launching enemy gets through, and if you don't train speed you're still yiffed! If you are fast enough you can start a mission next to multiple deathbellows or rocket launcher reticulians and not get hurt. Never neglect speed.

 

Lastly, it seems that the game's recovery of items is buggy. If you go on a two stage mission it forgets the items in the first stage, and any other stages before it! This is bad, because it seems like the amount of ammo you get is related to the number of guns you have. Pick up all enemy weapons and put them in your backpack. You can conserve space or your can conserve ammo. I'd rather have more ammo, so space conservation it is!

[Aralez]

Excellent, Landon_Fox, this should be read by any UFOAM newcomer.

 

And you touched another really interesting item: How does the AI work? I only know that they have hardcoded lists of times for doing things like shooting and reloading etc. and they have an AI file which contains data like this:

 

SUB_AI

TIRED

MIN -10.0

MAX 10.0

DEFAULT0 -6.0

DELTA0 0.01

AIDEFAULT0 0.0

DEFAULT1 0.0

DELTA1 0.5

AIDEFAULT1 0.0

MULTIPLIER 1.0

IMATTACKED 0.0

IMWOUNDED 0.0

IATTACKED 0.0

IHIT 0.0

ENEMYSPOT 0.0

FRIENDHIT 0.0

FRIENDDEAD 0.0

ENEMYDEAD 0.0

ENEMYHIT 0.0

SLOWPROJLAUNCHED 0.0

ENEMYNEAR 0.0

FRIENDNEAR 0.0

COVERED 0.0

ATTACKING 0.0

WALKING 0.015

END_OF_SUB_AI

 

But those numbers hardly tell you what attracts those reticulans or transgenants. Iirc i was told that the AI reacts to shots being fired and to sightings of course. I watched the enemy movement in a base attack mission (with a cheat) and thought it acted VERY randomly when choosing it's way. A mouse in a labyrinth is faster....

[Landon_Fox]

Thanks.

 

Hmm, I don't have any specific numbers with regards to the AI. All my data is from observation of the game as it plays. Most aliens charge on sight. Others charge when shot. A few will not charge at all. The latter are usually transgenetics and not much threat.

 

If the alien won't charge, then check to see if you can sneak into shotgun range or if there is a sniping possiblity. If he's got a rocket launcher then you can probably bait him into using all his ammo. A fast solder can play peek-a-boo and run away from ground zero. After all the rockets are spit, make sure you let the rookie take him so he gets some experience. Finally, you can just use a two person team. One with a gun shooting around the corner and the other with medikits. The latter garentees a long hospital visit though so it's a last resort.