Psionics and stuff

[Slythe]

So after starting a few games where I played only the first couple months, just to get the hang of things again, I'm deep in a game now (beginner level), and it's been going really well. I was lucky enough to get the first burst of UFO activity close to my base, which gives you a jump start on things. By early May I had 6 bases all with hyperwave decoders. I can track any UFO that appears.

 

At this point I've just finished my first month of psi training, and I noticed that even soldiers with a psi strength of around 50 seem to get panicked or even controlled fairly easily. I recently downed 2 medium sectoid harvest ships in South America. While my squad slowly moves towards and enters each ship, the leader continuously launches attacks from the safety of his command room. These missions are the most dangerous at present, as invariably an attack gets through and one of my soldiers starts gunning down the nearest comrade. This is making me think that getting psi labs as early as possible is a key goal, as it's painful to find out that soldiers who have done many a mission and achieved a high rank need to be sacked because they have a low psi strength. Does everyone else sack the soldiers who it turns out have a low psi strength, regardless of their rank, etc ? I'm thinking no lower than 50 ps is a reasonable limit to set, but that would mean a rather high turnover rate, and attaining as many psi labs and soldiers as early on as possible otherwise I'd never get a good sized psi capable force up to speed soon enough.

 

Also I have a question about bases. Is it necessary to keep soldiers and defensive installations at every single base, even if you're careful about not downing ufos too close to the bases ? That would cut down on both expenses and time training. I'd love to be able to just have 'listening and interception' posts with a grav lift, stores, a hyperwave, and some hangars, and that's it.

[NKF]

I like to set my psi strength minimum at 70, and it is a heck of a lot higher in TFTD due to its cranked up difficulty levels. I find this is usually sufficient protection from all but panic attacks from the strongest psi creatures.

 

I tend to build a manufacturing/storage base on one of the polar caps, since it doesn't see much action, and one of its secondary functions is as a buffer for new soldiers. See, transferred soldiers get there faster than newly recruited soldiers. While they're waiting, I put them through psi-evaluations. I like to have twice as many soldiers than spaces in the psi-labs so that the evaluations can be rotated easily and any bad eggs replaced before the next month is over. It takes a bit of time and a fairly hefty investment (still, by the time it's all set up, you'll have enough money to support two such bases if you wanted to), but the outcome is that you can easily set up a team of soldiers that are practically numb to all forms of psi attacks before they are sent off for actual active duty. Sort of like your own recruitment agency....

 

As for bases: The cheap listening post with hanger and no guards is actually a good idea. I do it all the time myself, and have interceptors with dual plasmas scattered across the globe. Who needs the faster hybrid ships and waste elerium in a needless cross-continent chase when you can easily BE at the UFO's destination instead? Mmm, well, okay, so you need hybrid ships, you don't really need so many of them. Besides, interceptors don't need elerium.

 

But later in the game, when money permits, I'd still recommend investing in a small team of rookies to defend the base. Sometimes it's cheaper to defend an easily replaceable base rather than build a new one.

 

Of course, you could staff the base with HWPs. You don't need to pay rent or a salary for them, and they can be tucked safely away in storage. As mentioned in another thread, they also get a free load of ammunition if there isn't enough to arm them for a base defense mission. Laser and plasmas for preference, but Fusion ball HWP's would make excellent base defense units too. Just don't go overboard with them as you don't want to damage your base modules too much lest they get destroyed.

 

If only you didn't have to watch your base defence guns in action... All my bases would be impregnable with multiple gun batteries and multiple grav shields, and I'd very much welcome any aliens to attack my bases however much they want. Heh, like lemmings. The way gun modules are implemented, all they do is delay the inevitable.

 

- NKF

[Slythe]

Hmm well it seems that the aliens finding one of your bases is dependent on either sheer luck, or if one of your bases is very close to one of their bases. In a recent game, after a few months, I plopped down the groundwork for a new base in 'Siberia'. Now I had noticed a great deal of alien activity in that area, and figured there was probably a base somewhere around there, but I needed to cover that region. I had only started building the grav lift, stores, and a hangar, and about a week passed when suddenly I receive the message that the aliens had destroyed an undefended base. Well needless to say that made me a bit paranoid about starting to build another base in that region, as I was unsure of how they located it so quickly.

 

On a sidenote, I'm playing a game where by February 5th I got TWO terror missions, then another at the end of February. I don't think I ever recall getting 3 terror missions within the first 2 months. This all on beginner level of course.

[Mouse Nightshirt]

They will find you if you are near their base, and vice-versa. Otherwise, to discover your base, it usually results from you being far too successful for their liking, so they send craft on "Alien Retaliation" missions. These are for X-Com base discovery missions, or to attack your base; build a Mind Shield if possible to stave them off. However, if the someone do manage to spot your base, deconstruct it, and spend the maintenance money on other things.

[NKF]

I've built new bases near alien bases for strategic purposes before, and they're generally left alone if you don't shoot any ships down near it. All the alien bases do are act as alien activity point generators and attract supply ships.

 

Retaliation scouts are generally sent out if they find that you are constantly shooting down ships in certain areas. For example, let's pretend you're always shooting down your enemies over Siberia. The aliens will eventually send off a scout to investigate. Your base could be over in France and they won't find it. But if you have a new base (or even an old one for that matter), let's say for sake of argument, in China, the scouts will probably wander about and eventually find it because of its proximity.

 

- NKF

[Slythe]

That's odd because I don't recall having shot down any ufos in that area before I started building a base there.

 

Anyway, to change topics, in the current game I'm playing, I think it's May or June, I had 2 medium sectoid abductor ships appear near my starting base in Europe, which I shot down, then before I had a chance to dispatch my Skyranger a 'base-forming' swarm of ships also appeared. I shot down the 2 supply ships and a scout, and assaulted a landed battleship. So basically I did a landed battleship, a downed large supply ship, another supply ship, a medium abductor, another abductor, and a scout all one right after the other. Needless to say I was quite wealthy after all that

[NKF]

Perhaps there was a retaliation scout not exactly in the area you built your base, but nearby?. They do tend to wander a bit if they can't find anything.

 

I once sent the scouts on a wild goose chase and had them searching southern Africa when my base was up near the English channel.

 

- NKF

[Alitorious]

I'm not sure that Alien Bases are just limited to alien pont generators and supply ship magnets.

 

In one game, after I had worldwide hyperwave coverage, both the UK and Canada mysteriously defected at the end of two separate months.

What was really strange was that at the end of those two months, XCOM Agents found alien bases in those two countries.

Even more strange was I remember no alien base building activity, nor any infiltration activity. (There were infiltration scouts, but no battleships)

 

So, I guess sometimes if an Alien Base just happens to "Appear" in a country, they'll defect. Very strange.

 

 

I always staff my bases with 10 or 15 rookies. (Once I successfully defended a snakeman invasion with 10 unarmoured autocannon rookies, though I lost about half as many troops to friendly fire than alien fire, ). That way, at the end of the month once you've completed psi training, you can scrub the soldiers with low-psi at your main base , and just transfer those from other bases. Then use NKF's training/weeding facility method. Bascially, it means a psi-cabable force within a month of completing psi lab construction (Depends on what time of month they finish)

[Slythe]

You actually just answered the other question I was going to ask, that being how many soldiers does everyone usually like to keep for minimal defense at all their other bases ? Also, is psi ability a factor for determining the soldiers that stay at those bases (not your main team) ? It seems that since attacks on bases are rare, and attacks by ethereals rarer still, it probably doesnt matter if you keep weak psi soldiers as base defenders.

[NKF]

I usually have a minimum of 8 soldiers myself. I also support them with a few laser HWPs to fend off any sectopods and cyberdiscs. Nevertheless, the more the merrier, given your budget allows it.

 

As for psi-levels, I don't really bother too much about it, but it would be a good idea to station some high psi defence troops in your remote bases just in case. I had a rather nasty encounter with an ethereal crew just recently, and most of my heavy hardware was cut off from the rest of the base due to the base disjoint bug. You know, I didn't know the laser HWP's could cut through X-Com base walls...

 

On a less related note: I find that overstocking your bases sometimes causes some of the aliens to not get equipped, since the item table gets used up for all those unecessary clips. Forgetting to reguarly spring clean the base, I once had a snakeman crew attack it. All I had to worry about were the chryssalids and one or two snakemen that were armed. Rather a pathetic mission come to think of it.

 

Still, it might get rather dull removing all those clips every time the base is attacked.

 

- NKF