Okay, more questions...

[Slythe]

I'm curious about some things, and having read Fox's post listing all he had by November I'm thinking there are things I could be doing better.

 

1) Multiple questions about research. At what point in the game do you go for power armor (as soon as you get personal armour or do you survive with personal armour for some time while you research other things first) ?; when do you research hyperwave decoders ? (they're very nice but I got them early and found I just didn't have enough money to build both them and my psi labs within the first 5 months)

 

2) How quickly do you start expanding your scientist and engineer pool beyond 50 each ?

 

3) Do you try to always use tanks when you can ? I know they make great scouts, but I feel I'm a bit dependent on them. I still get into trouble when I do a recovery or assault mission without one. For example it seems the only way to ensure 100% safety on the farmland maps is to just demolish absolutely everything so you don't walk into an alien waiting around a corner.

 

4) How many soldiers do you try to rotate on missions within the first 5 or so months before your psi labs are built ? I've found it's problematic to keep using the same 10 soldiers over and over until my psi labs are finally built and find out that say 8 of them are too weak in psi and need to be sacked, thus leaving me with a bunch of rookies against mutons which start appearing at that point. I've been using 70+ as a minimum psi strength to weed out soldiers.

 

5) Once you get psi labs researched, what's your general strategy regarding them ? i.e. do you immediately build as many labs as you can at one of your bases and start building up your soldier pool ?

[Tammy]

Good questions

 

1. I usually try to get good armor quickly because it's no good to train elite squads of psi soldiers if they're going to get killed every time they get shot. Hyperwave decoder is a very good thing to have, but I don't think I'd put off psi labs to get one. Maybe at alternate bases?

 

2. Well, 50 is a pretty respectable number until you've got some real cash rolling in from selling the loot from your raids.

 

3. I don't use tanks all that much myself. I think it's because I resent the amount of room they take up--just a psychological thing with me since I prefer human soldiers. Of course, in the Avenger, it doesn't matter so much, but a Skyranger's pretty cramped. I generally just try to keep my guys in cover and covering each other to avoid losses.

 

4. I usually have 20-25 soldiers if I can afford them. That way I don't get into trouble with injuries, and I can sack psi-weaklings if I want without decimating my squad. It also means that I can leave a few at the base in case of a raid.

 

5. I just build one psi lab at each base myself and I concentrate more on diagnostic rather than offensive training. I don't use psi attack as much as I should in UFO. Strange really since I use it all the time in Apoc.

[Hobbes]

1. I usually only bother getting power suits when the Snakemen start appearing out of the skies. Meanwhile I focus on offensive weaponry and UFO construction, among others.

 

2. Same as Tammy. Even with the transfer salary trick usually it's better to hold back on hiring people until you can maintain in your coffers a reasonably amount of funding all the time (for me its 10k).

 

3. Tanks are great as scouts. However, if you play it cool and by the numbers, taking care as you walk around the battlefield you can use a full squad of soldiers with few losses. For me it depends on my patience.

 

4. I try to reach 3-4 bases, each with a Skyranger and some 14 soldiers spread out through the globe and use them on rotation. Takes a while longer to build the trooper's stats but overall you get plenty of experienced soldiers rather than a few veteran officers standing in a bunch of rookies.

 

5. Again like Tammy, i built a psi lab on all my bases to see the quality of the troops. Later i tend to gather all of the high psis in one base and train them there, saving them for those really difficult missions. I try not to use psi since it spoils much of the game.

 

Hope it helps

[Fox]

1) Power suits are usually top priority for me. I always try and have power suits by end of february to beginning march. This ties in with engineers and scientist numbers.

 

2) For January, 50 scientists are good. But past that, you need another laboratory. 50 just isn't going to cut it for what you are going to need. Start building your second laboratory after you sell some stuff from your first interceptions. Get about 34 engineers ASAP as well, you are going to need them for the medkits, motion scanners and laser rifles.

 

3) If you wan't to get off of being dependant on HWPs, start making some Lightnings. Since they have no HWP slots, they force you to make some new tactics. Experiment with the Lightning. Like I said in another post, it is my favorite lander.

 

If you are having trouble with losing guys from reaction fire around corners, MAKE MOTION SCANNERS. Those things are invaluable, and give your guys a heavy advantage. No alien simply wastes all their TUs (except Cyberdisks and a few other terrorists), they will always do a 360* turn to check their six, thus giving you a motion blip. All my soldiers have motion scanners on their belts, just in case.

 

4) Psi strength is a debatable topic, but here's my solution: expand your bases. Expand to at least 3 bases by April. Get at least 5 landing squads out of those three. It's easy to get 1 skyranger at each base, and then 1 lightning there too. When a base is lacking in veterans, do some squad transfers. With the coverage, you'll be tracking UFOs like mad, spotting alien bases to raid, thus giving all squads a lot of experience.

 

On to the point, I have never sacked a soldier for psi-weakness. By the time Ethereals come, I have nabbed a Sectoid Leader, and I have psi-attack, as well as Blaster Launchers. I am able to jack the Ethereals up so bad and so quickly, they don't even have enough time to mind blast me. Within 2-3 turns I can usually have an Ethereal Supply ship covered, with about 3 ethereals to mop up. Their morale is usually low and they wont psi attack me.

 

If you find you need to assault a medium-very large UFO (Abducter-Battleship) with psi-attacking aliens, send a blaster bomb to knock out the wall outside of the command center of the UFO. Then send another one in next turn (or with another rocketeer on the same turn) to take out the high-ranking aliens, and possibly even grease some others. This will hinder their pis-attack capability a few turns, enough for you to start murdering the rest of the aliens. Blaster Bombs will always get you out of sticky situations.

 

5) As far as Psi-Labs go, I have 2 at each base. 20 solidiers in each base being trained is plenty. As soon as psi-weak soldiers become apparent, just take them out of training and put some other guys in. It's pointless to keep weaklings in training. More often than not, psi-experience from battle gives you more +psi attack than just leaving guys in a lab. Every time you successfully panic an alien a little bit, or mind control one, you get a little boost to psi-attack. So in the early days of psi-attack, just use "panic unit", as that's easier to do than "mind control". Your stats will go up faster that way.

 

A special thanks to everyone who actually read this far.

[Mouse Nightshirt]

I'm gonna answer these before I read the answers, so it's my method.

 

 

1) Multiple questions about research. At what point in the game do you go for power armor (as soon as you get personal armour or do you survive with personal armour for some time while you research other things first) ?; when do you research hyperwave decoders ? (they're very nice but I got them early and found I just didn't have enough money to build both them and my psi labs within the first 5 months)

Personal armour is an important step, especially in the lower difficulty levels. I tend to research them ASAP along with Medi-kit. However, on the higher difficulty levels, I like to research power armour quickly, as I'm receiving a lot more shots, as enemy accuracy goes up.

Hyperwave Decoders, IMO, are critical. They are one of my immediate projects (IE I cancel all other projects to get it unless they are of greater importance, such as Heavy Plasmas)

 

2) How quickly do you start expanding your scientist and engineer pool beyond 50 each ?

Engineers: Only once a construction base has been built, which may be a year into the game. Otherwise this is kept at about 45 (as you can never fit 50 in a workshop for any normal production needs

Scientists: I hit 100 later in the game (a year to a year and a half), and only once a second base is up, and fully functional.

 

3) Do you try to always use tanks when you can ? I know they make great scouts, but I feel I'm a bit dependent on them. I still get into trouble when I do a recovery or assault mission without one. For example it seems the only way to ensure 100% safety on the farmland maps is to just demolish absolutely everything so you don't walk into an alien waiting around a corner.

I never use the basic tanks, and keep Plasma Hovertank usage to a minimum. I've just learnt to use troops, you've learnt to compliment them with tanks. So I can't really advise anything

 

4) How many soldiers do you try to rotate on missions within the first 5 or so months before your psi labs are built ? I've found it's problematic to keep using the same 10 soldiers over and over until my psi labs are finally built and find out that say 8 of them are too weak in psi and need to be sacked, thus leaving me with a bunch of rookies against mutons which start appearing at that point. I've been using 70+ as a minimum psi strength to weed out soldiers.

At start, I buy 14, and use those 14 continuosly, unless I suffer a casualty.

 

5) Once you get psi labs researched, what's your general strategy regarding them ? i.e. do you immediately build as many labs as you can at one of your bases and start building up your soldier pool ?

I build one. And I usually keep it that way. Early on I experimented, and found they took too much bother to be concerned about if there are 2 at each of 4 bases. I extend myself to two in my main base if there is enough space to build though.

[NKF]

1. Armour is top priority, since you can hold off any of the early alien crews (sectoids, snakemen and floaters have very poor armour) pretty easily with just about any weapon, even pistols, plus any form of laser for their terror unit companions. Besides, the armour research ties closely with advanced craft since it's mostly made up of craft components, so the sooner you get hybrid craft, the better. The faster you get a commander or two and the avenger, the faster you'll get to see cydonia.

 

2. These days, I stick with enough staff for the starting 50 slots in the lab. Since you can get a pretty good turn of research speed if you know how to cut corners. Like only researching one pair of plasma rifle or heavy plasma and its clip to get craft plasma cannons. Ignoring the base defence modules. Ignoring alien cadavers saves a huge amount of research time. As for interrogation, only concetrate on leaders, commanders, one navigator and a sectoid leader or commander/ethereal. Everything else can be ignored until the scientists have no more work to do. Of course, if my main objective is speedy research, one of the first four base modules I build at the very start of the game includes a lab along with crew quarters and a containment unit. The staff of course comes as money becomes available.

 

3. Tanks are tanks are tanks. They're expendable so it's okay to take risks with them. They're great support units, but they aren't a silver bullet. You don't need them to win a mission.

 

4. I like to have at least twice as many or more soldiers in a base as there are slots for the psi-labs. This way you can fill in all the empty slots with fresh troops, sack the poor psi-troops and then replace them with new ones before the month is through. Of course, before this, I like to have at least two to three soldier replacements per soldier. For a standard ten-person team, this makes it between 20 to 30 soldiers. Mind you, this is only for assault bases. For listening/intercept posts, I just get a base garrison of 10 plus rocket tanks of any variety. Since I'm not expecting much action there, their replacements can come along at any time.

 

5. I build one psi-lab in my primary base, and then build two or three in my recruitment/store/manufacturing base in one of the polar caps. All this base does is manufacture and store goods as well as act as a large buffer for new recruits, since transferring is a lot faster than waiting for new recruits to arrive. If you don't have good funding, this tends to be rather costly since these soldiers are paid, but they don't see much action. Over the months, the psi labs screens the new soldiers. The good ones are redistributed to the other bases as necessary, the bad ones sacked, and then they're replaced with newly hired soldiers.

 

But if your aim is getting to cydonia quickly, then perhaps this is not the way to go.

 

- NKF

[Slythe]

Thanks to everyone for the information.

 

If you are having trouble with losing guys from reaction fire around corners, MAKE MOTION SCANNERS

 

I've recently started using these, primarily for detecting movement behind ufo doors, but also everywhere in a ufo.

 

Expand to at least 3 bases by April. Get at least 5 landing squads out of those three. It's easy to get 1 skyranger at each base, and then 1 lightning there too

 

I wonder how soon you get a Skyranger at each base. This sounds like an interesting idea, as I've always relied on only my starting Skyranger for a long time until I'm actually building new craft.

[Munkeylord]

this is what i usually do, buy weapons and equipment, soldiers and scientist. i don't use armor until i get my second base going i do the wave attack kinda deal with lots of troops and replace the ones that are kia. i don't just charge in either usually do the base of fire thing where as one group covers the other group until i get to where i want to go. sometimes it works and sometimes i have to abort but usually i don't have to abort. i rarly lose i man that way. and also use as much ammo as possible to kill those aliens, autoshot them till they can float in water, and grenades are good for entering buildings. cover is essential, you have no cover you die. pretty simple. thats how i fight my battles, then i build a research base and a manufacureing base for those things you gotta have with about 300 scientist and engineers. if you get real rich you can build a psi base to train psi soldiers that won't have to fight until they are mind gods. oh and another fun thing i like to do is leave alien bases intact. i perform elerium raids on them with 3-6 elite troops with the best equipment i got. take their elerium and leave. sometimes without being caught and sometimes there whole base dies except for the few in the control center. but ya.....anyways

[BladeFireLight]

How exactily do you do an elerium raid? the elerium usualy gets destroyed when you blow up the power sorce geting to it.

[NKF]

You know, the funny thing is, I know in TFTD the ion beam accelerator units (the blue box thingy) tend to blow up at the lightest of taps, but in UFO, they don't. I tried it both in UFO dos and CE. You can just blast them open with a weapon strong enough to destroy a power unit and them step into the rubble and pick up the elerium pod. It really doesn't seem right when you think about it.

 

As for the alien bases, there's only one alien base module that I know of that has elerium. It's the large 20 x 20 tile area with the room with a corridor running all round it, with one passage inside the room and a grav-lift that leads up to four store rooms. The walls in the surrounding corridor look a little different from the general alien base walls. Upstairs, the south room has two power units, but only one has elerium in it.

 

Personally, I prefer to attack the supply ships. That's 150 elerium plus all the loot your recovery team can haul back to base. On the other hand, there will always be elerium in that base module, so you can grab it and run off with it every time.

 

- NKF

[AcidBoot]

I go for laser rifles first, then straight up the armour path ASAP. I like all my guys in flying armour. I know a lot of people bag this and favour normal power armour, but I like the tactical flexibility, and I think the extra protection goes a long way.

 

I like Hyperwave decoders, but they are hardly critical. If money is an issue, don't get them. That said, I have never had much in the way of money issues after Feb'99. First few missions I sell ALL artefacts. Infact, the only things I don't sell are elerium & blasterbombs. I build up a moderate supply of alloys(300) and alien grenades(30), and I try to keep at least 4 powersupplys in store until I have built all the new craft I want. As I approach completion of flying armour research I will hold onto plasma gear so that I can aim towards plasma cannons. I also generally keep a stockpile of P-rifle clips at this stage. I only actually use P-rifles on important or difficult missions.

 

Hiring lots of engineers can be profitable. Just put them to work pumping out las-pistols. They have an excellent capital return per workhour. I like to have two workshops at every base, and about 95 engineers per base too. This fixes up your cash quick smart, and means that when you want to actually produce something specific, you can do it very quickly. This extra cash also means you can pretty much hire as many scientists as you want.

 

I do not use tanks on away missions. I keep a couple at each base, incase of invasion, and I typically get a plasma HWP each base once able. Fact is... a HWP takes up four slots, and is seldom as powerful as four guys.

 

In terms of PSI labs, I will build one as soon as I'm able. At that stage I basically double the number of troops I have. Usually by that stage I have two teams of 14 on opposite sides of the globe, so I get 1 lab for each of those bases. I will train the combat weakest first, then work my way up. I don't care if someone is bad at psi provided thier accuracy is high. If a trooper has an accuracy <60 and is psi defence weak, it's goodnight (for that matter, generally anyone with an accuracy <55 I sack unless they show remarkable psi talent. I don't go in for psi in a big way. Mainly I just do it for defensive purposes. If someone shows top potential in both strength and attack I will actively train that person, but I'll usually only do it once or twice if they are a top shooter.

 

I find that I'm usually ready to attack Cydonia before a proper psi training schedule can be completed.

[Spaceman42]

Meh. I periodically "purge" my base of stuff, selling *all but one* of whatever's in there. [EXCLUDING weapons currently in use and non-manufacturable items. Oh, and Heavy Plasmas.] Hey, what I don't have, I can manufacture, right? The one item I leave is for research.

 

Makes me wonder what they do with the alien corpses I sell, though...

[AcidBoot]

Ha! Yes... What do they do with those corpses. IMHO I sell them to hollywood as cheap special effects in B-grade sci-fis

 

I figure I have also sold enough las-pistols to rearm the US army and marines... why aren't the pulling thier weight, rather than slinging me a measly $12M per annum?

[BladeFireLight]

Spaceman: Ever wonder what was in school lunches?

[JellyfishGreen]

"Hey Researchers! Don't be the last biomedical facility in the country to own your VERY OWN ALIEN CORPSE! Yes, now YOU can be just like the BIG THREE! Don't miss out!

Already have a Sectoid? Don't leave yet! We have MORE extraterrestrial species arriving every month! Corpse supplies are limited, so order NOW"

 

...man, this'll be easier once eBay is invented.

 

I like my Sectoids with nori and wasabi.

[Spaceman42]

Heh. Auctions of BBLs [sans BBs, of course]...

 

I'm not sure why, but I always seem to have too many BBLs and BBs kicking around. I'm considering just nuking the next big ship that comes along...

 

"Everybody with BBLs"

 

"Oops. Sorry, sarge."

[NKF]

Spaceman: A tip re research: You don't need to keep 1 item in storage. Just start the research project, then sell off the lot. In fact, that's what I do all the time now. As soon as a new project comes along, I start it, but don't allocate any scientists to it until I want to start work on it. Saves a meagre amount of space, but at least you get to keep an uncluttered storage room.

 

- NKF

[Spaceman42]

Ah? I keep them until I have them researched, *then* I sell them.

[NKF]

A sample is required to get the project started. But once you've got the project up and running (with or without scientists), you no longer need the sample.

 

The project will only stop if you dismantle your labs or the base gets destroyed.

 

That's why it's a good idea to immediately start any new research projects that come along, but don't assign any scientists to them until you want the artefacts researched.

 

This way if you accidentally clear out your stores of an unresearched artefact, you'll still be able to research it.

 

 

- NKF

[Solfius]

can you sell live aliens? I imagine a live floater medic would be worth a great deal, but I can't see it on the sell screen.

[BladeFireLight]

The only way to remove an alien from alien containment is through the research option... I think that this is why some pople complain they did not get the 'commander' is becaus they dont empty out the containment.. I alwase have some scientists working on the POW's I catch

 

the realy question is where do they go after interagation?

 

Concentration camps?

They die? where is the body for atopsy?

NY city Cab drivers?

School luch menu?

BBQ for the new rookie initiation?

 

[Munkeylord]

well the way i do elerium raids, i don't destroy the power source i just put a few holes in it with a heavy plasma gun. though sometimes there isn't any elerium in the power source there is a way to tell if there is. if the power source has a purple dot on it(looks like a stun bomb) then there is elerium in it. if not don't bother with it. and also what version of xcom do you use? i don't think it would really matter on that part but it might. :alien2:

[Munkeylord]

lol when i first started playing this game i figured that if i held onto the alien corpses that the aliens will stop comeing or just buying them back from whoever they were sold to and regenerating them. when i decided it was a silly thing to hang onto them i sold them all making about 40 million bucks off of rotting aliens. never had a problem with storage after that. and i'm serious about it too