I'm one sad man...

[Strong Bob]

I've had X-COM UFO Defense for a few years now. And despite playing hundreds of hours total, I have yet to beat the game.

 

I've tried a bunch of different strategies, but the game seems awful random to me, and I'm playing the beginner setting! Most of my trouble comes from the Sectoids and Ethereals mind controlling my agents, and the attacks on my base early in the game before it's possible to have a single missile pad up. I also have difficulty getting my troops into good defensive positions, with them getting killed in a single shot from at least 50 yards away. (I've also noticed the kneeling position does next to nothing to improve aim or defense.)

 

Anybody got any tactics I can use for this?

[Skonar]

AUTO FIRE! AUTO FIRE UNTO THE GRAVE!

 

Also move your people around in groups, always, always click that 'Reserve points for autofire' button, and, er...

 

Keep them in groups.

 

If you see an alien, and you want it dead in the same turn, your best bet is 3 troopers shooting at it. Seriously. And if it's not dead on the turn you see it, chances are it's gonna whack one of your troops.

 

Which... Sucks.

[Strong Bob]

Well, that would solve my combat problem. But is there any defense against mind control so early in the game? Can't tell you how many times I've had soldiers go nuts from inside the SkyRanger and shoot up all my other guys from berserk mind control.

 

I also forgot to ask... What's the best way to go about research? I've been doing: Laser Weapons, Laser Pistol, Laser Rifle, Medi-Kit, and then any captured/dead aliens I've got.

[Munkeylord]

well there is no defense against mind control, the only way to prevent it (with sectoids) is to kill them before you try to take out tanks, i've noticed only the higher level sectoids can mind control. etherials on the other hand are a pain in the ass. numbers is a good way to take them out. also good defense is haveing cover at all times and also never send units out on there own. always have a squad or a big group that is spread out over an area so they may provide cover fire for each other, you could loose people doing this anyways but its better than having everyone get shot in separate areas. use grenades, i stress this alot. throw them in blind spots where you think an alien may be, they also put up a smoke screen to provide some cover. also buildings provide lots of cover, in a terrorsite if i get in a tough jam i take over a nearby building and defend it. it usually works out. if you don't have enough time units to fire and then take cover don't take the shoot. cover is better than taking that shot, cause what good is a dead soldier.

[Alan]

*considers*

 

if one of your men gets mind controled:

a) as soon as you get control make them drop everything

B) stun them, or

c) kill them.

 

ok, you may have trouble with c, but you may aswell. an easily mind controled agent is useless against sectoids and ethereals. worse than useless, dangerous to his(/her) fellow agents.

 

admittedly it is preferable to save them as they are still useful against non-psi aliens....

 

Also... /me recommends smoke grenades. Alien can't shoot what alien can't see. not easily at least.

[NKF]

Spend some time reading the older threads (check back on the previous pages too). They are chok full of combat strategy goodness.

 

You won't be facing mind control too early, as only Sectoid Leaders and Commanders know how to use psionics. Once you hit the ethereals, suffer! Even the lowly Ethereal soldiers know how to use psi.

 

You must capture either a sectoid leader or commander, or any ethereal to learn about the psi-labs, which you can then in turn use to sieve your soldiers to find those that have poor psi-strength. Until then, you might want to steer clear of psionic aliens.

 

Before you can get the labs, the only way to sieve your soldiers is to do it in combat. If a soldier is mind controlled after only a few psi attacks, then perhaps that soldier should be replaced. It can be very hard if the soldier's an excellent combatant, but it is something that must be done. At least don't bring the soldier in for combat with sectoids or ethereals.

 

And yes, use more HWPs. They cannot be affected by psionics, therefore you can get them to keep on fighting while your soldiers aren't doing so well.

 

If you've progressed far enough to get power suits, a good idea would be to arm most of your soldiers with standard pistols and rifles for sectoid battles, particularly the soldiers you suspect of being low in psi strength. See, power suits won't even feel the pistol or rifle bullets, but the sectoids, who have no armour, will. However, the same cannot be said about their accompanying terror units, if the battle is in a terror site, a base battle or a terror ship. You'd need something stronger to hurt those.

 

As for your bases, the easiest way to deter the aliens from attacking it so early on is to not shoot enemy UFOs down near your base. Try to wait until they're a considerable distance away before opening fire. This won't stop the occasional base attack, but it does mean that they won't be out searching for your base as frequently (at least, not in the right areas).

 

For defending the base -- don't try to take on too many aliens at a time. Take it slowly and get into defensive positions. Use the HWP closets and other side rooms to your advantage, and try to hide in them whenever the turn ends. Use proximity mines and mine the corridors that you know will have a bit of alien traffic. Early on in the base defence, if you have a rocket HWP or rocket launcher, fire a few random rounds into the hangars if you've got a clear shot.

 

Also remember that you can have more HWPs in base defence than you can on standard missions. You also don't need to stock any ammunition for them and they will start the mission armed.

 

When fighting the aliens, try not to shoot at them when they can see you. For example, if you move a soldier out in front and that soldier spots an alien, have the soldier retreat or hide around a corner and have the soldiers who were standing a little further back down the corridor, open fire. Again, a case of aliens not being able to shoot at what they cannot see. Works in all kinds of missions. However, the aliens' range for their line of sight doesn't seem to be affected by the light levels, so they can probably see a few tiles further than you can in dark conditions. This shouldn't be a problem in the base, but it can be in field missions.

 

As for kneeling: on the contrary, it does help. A lot, in most cases. Your size is reduced and therefore you make a smaller target.

 

Your accuracy stat is multiplied by 1.15, making all your shots 15% more accurate. It may only offer a miniscule increase for certain weapons, like the pistols, but the small increase really does help in the long run. It's especially useful for your heavy weapons, like the rocket launcher which already has quite an impressive 'aimed shot' accuracy modifier.

 

 

As for your research:

 

There's no right or wrong way to go about it, but I'd recommend that you leave all alien corpses for last. There are also only a few live aliens that will give you any actual benefits, so you can put off researching some live alien ranks for last. Soldiers, engineers, medics aren't that important, and after researching one navigator, they too become redundant. The engineers do provide tech info on the ufos though, but as you really can't do much with it, it would be more productive to leave them off for later. The medics just fill in the blanks for any autopsy or interrogations that you haven't got yet, so it's worth keeping them for the very last.

 

For the tech you start with I generally start off with laser weapons -> laser pistols -> laser rifles -> medikit -> heavy laser -> craft laser cannon -> motion sensor. I generally ignore the laser defenses.

 

But anywhere after the laser rifle, if the components are available, I go straight for armour before resuming the above. Alloys -> personal armour -> power source -> power armour

 

When I'm all set up with armour and the craft laser cannons, I go straight for the craft plasma cannon.

 

Either plasma rifle or heavy plasma -> the last weapon's corresponding clip -> plasma cannon (again, I ignore the plasma defenses)

 

This pretty much sets me up for the rest of the game. I then just research anything useful and leave off the less useful research topics for last.

 

But that's just me.

 

- NKF

[Morsey]

You have to buila an alien containment.

Then capture a sectoid leader, research him...and the tide will start to turn. :devil:

[Strong Bob]

Thanks fellas. This'll help me quite a bit. :alien2:

[The Veteran]

I find it hard to believe that out of all of the gamers here, no one has pointed out that beserk isn't a psi attack!

Panic and mind control are psionic attacks. Beserk is caused by low morale, as is non alien caused panicking...

 

My only advice is this is not a game! Treat it like you would in life. Put yourself in place of the soldier you're commanding and if you see any aliens put yourself in their position. Whenever you think about making a move, think what would be going through the soldiers mind and how any aliens would react to it... Always use cover and kneel whenever you can.

I'd recommend a large grenade cache... But I wouldn't recommend over using them. They do tend to attract a little attention! Like I said, treat it as though every soldier is you. That way you NEVER die!

 

That's how I play anyway

[The Demi-Godly One]

A very useful stratedgy is to make one scout and have all the rest of your units near the Skyranger. Once your unit sees someone make the other people shoot him, it works very well with laser weapons because it doesn't matter very much if you miss.

[Jman4117]

Good strategy! Use rookie for spotter and have sniper take out alien. Works very good, especially in open terrain and you don't have a problem with reaction fire unless the scout is shot on sight. You can have a squad of elite snipers in just a few months with this tactic

[Ice2056]

I find it hard to believe that out of all of the gamers here, no one has pointed out that beserk isn't a psi attack!

Panic and mind control are psionic attacks. Beserk is caused by low morale, as is non alien caused panicking...

What causes low morale? My soldiers, even the higher ranked, have a considerable drop in morale when invading large UFO's. Even though none of my troops had been killed. Is it the length of the mission, getting shot at, scary environments? All of them?

[The Veteran]

Low morale's caused by loads of things. XCom casualties and wounds. Any kind of alien psionic attacks, high civilian casualties, long missions and failure to achieve XCom goals... The list goes on but I forget the rest!

[The Demi-Godly One]

"Long Missions"?

[NKF]

I can confidently say that the scary atmosphere and a long mission that's gone horribly wrong will surely reduce your morale (you as in you the player).

 

In the game, morale loss stems primarily from:

 

- Being wounded

- Death of friendly units (including HWPs). Morale loss is even worse if a high ranking officer kicks the bucket.

- Being attacked psionically (but only if the attacks are successful)

 

Long missions won't reduce your morale -- unless you get hurt, killed or attacked by psionics.

 

I haven't really noticed any loss in morale for accidentally killing civilians (probably because in most of these cases I killed an alien along with them, so the morale bonus and the morale penalty may have counteracted).

 

Losing civilians to the aliens shouldn't reduce your soldiers' morales. Would be disasterous if it did. In TFTD, you can sometimes lose half if not the entire population of a terror site after the first turn alone. Would be nasty to start panicking before you've had a chance to deploy.

 

 

- NKF