I need some serious help with ufo!

[TabulaRasa]

I really need help with ufo. I always seem to start the game fairly well, but I always lose. I hate to do missions with eureathrals (if thats how you spell it lol!) because my soldiers end up getting mind controlled, throw an alien grenade in the skyranger and lots of people die! Its the same with attacking a base, once i used tanks to attack, and won, did it again and lost. That was the only time i destroyed a base. Pathetic right? I also hate night terror missions, i take out one guy, BOOM! A plasma bolt comes out of nowhere and kills me. So i keep trying to kill whatever is firing at me, and it keeps killing my guys! PLEASE help! I really ned help!

[Squaddie01]

First some tips, night missions of any kind puts your X-Com forces at a real disadvantage. The aliens have better visibility and, as you have seen, snipe at you from beyond your visual. You'll need to take electro flares and scatter them about to illuminate areas. The choice here is to avoid night missions when possible. In case of a night terror attack, it will come down to patience and tactics. Although you are trying to save civilians, it's better to play it slow and secure small areas at a time. In open spaces, toss electro fares to improve visibility. In and around buildings, you'll have to reply on your motion scanner. Keep in mind, civilians show up on the scans too. Draw a line on how many casualties you can take. If you have to, inflict as much damage as possible without crossing that line and then retreat. Better to lose a few points then to lose everyone and your skyranger.

 

For mind control, X-Com units with low PSI strength are easily paniced and mind-controlled. Now assuming if you are losing before you even have PSI training, then one thing that I prefer to do, which is costly in the mid to early game is to fire/sack soldiers who are mind-controlled or easily paniced by Sectoids and Ethereals. The sooner the PSI challenged soldiers are removed the less of a threat mind controlling aliens become.

 

If you cannot afford hiring and firing troopers on the whim, then in combat against Ethereals and Sectoid ships known to have leaders and commanders, arm your men who are prone to mind control (You'll know who they are since the aliens will pick on them again and again.) with less deadly weapons. For example, don't give them grenades, the rocket launcher, the blaster bombs, heavy laser or plasma weapons. Instead, opt to give them at most a laser rifle and a motion scanner. Use these troopers to scout for the enemy and then snipe at them from a distant. My preferred choice is a stun launcher. If you have Power Armor or Flying Suits, the stun launchers for the most part will not affect your men. Also laser rifles usually don't take down your heavily armored troopers either, but I don't like having too many soldiers layed up in the hospital.

 

On base assaults, again patience here works well. Also take advantage of the 2nd floor starting position by having one person remain upstairs and using a motion scanner early on to help detect and clear the landing zones. If my forces are spaced far apart, I always try to link up both squads before going after the command center or before hunting down the enemy, since it's easy to be attacked from the flanks and rear. Depending on location I either move both squads toward each other or I have one squad moving while the other forms a protective perimiter. Then once linked up, I go on the offensive. Bring some electro flares on a base assault. Certain bases have dark areas where vision is greatly impaired.

 

A little long, but I hope it helps.

[Fox]

Good job, Squaddie.

 

I just have one thing to add: You can avoid night missions altogether except for two instances:

 

1. If the aliens attack your base at night. You have no choice but to defend it then and there.

2. Attacking an alien base. No matter if it's high noon or midnight, it will be nearly pitch black in there.

 

Here is a tactic you can use if you are desperate, but I tend to stay away from because it's almost like cheating:

 

If a terror site, or UFO crash landing site ever shows up (usually you can just wait until daytime for UFOs, as they hang around for 4-5 days before disappearing), and it is nighttime, launch an interceptor to the site. As time goes by and the interceptor nears it, daytime will get closer. If the interceptor runs out of fuel, launch another one to the terror site. It is important that you always keep one craft going towards the site. As long as the site is targetted, it will never disappear. If you had enough crafts, you could keep 1 terror site up for months, even years. So just keep one craft heading to the site at all times. Once daytime comes around, order your crafts back and send in the troop carrier.

[TabulaRasa]

Thanks for the help guys! Ill use this right now ! I will really like using the strategy of dispatching crafts to keep a terror site alive, thats cool! (even though it is cheating! If this doesnt work, then maybe well... I just really stink!

[NKF]

Cheating? Nah, the aliens are just overly courteous. They seem to know a ship is on the way, so they won't start shooting the civilians until you land.

 

You should spend some time reading previous threads in this forum. Check back a few pages too. Plenty of good advice all across the board.

 

Also note, if you have power suits or flying suits, you can safely arm the mind control prone soldiers with autocannons with HE shells. You'll only get hurt if the autocannon scores a direct hit. But you'll be completely safe from the splash damage (making it an awesome close-range weapon).

 

Me, I prefer to arm them with standard pistols, but that's just a personal preference rather than good advice.

 

Fox:

 

Your base's lighting isn't affected by the time of day. It'll have the same light level in the middle of the night as it would in the middle of the day. This doesn't apply to X-Com base maps selected with X-Comutil's map selector.

 

- NKF

[Rosstoid]

I try to attack alien bases and terror sites as less a possible. So here is my Number 1 super tactic.

 

Research heavy plasma and heavy plasma clip so you can research plasma cannon. Arm your craft with plasma beams now.

 

Shoot down every small UFO. You are bound to find a NAVIGATOR. When you enter small UFOs, arm your men with stun rods and guns. If you see any unarmed aliens or aliens facing the other way, stun them. Research the Navigator. Research hyperwave decoder and build one at each base. Whenever you see a terrorship, blow it out of the sky with plasma equipped craft. Now you won't have to worry about terrormissions.

 

All you need is one live ethereal or sectoid leader or navigator to reseach psi technology. When you do that, you can hand-pick a team of elite soldiers to deal with ethereals.

[Rosstoid]

Oops, I meant "sectoid commander", not sectoid navigator

[Groovechamp]

Thought I could give my tips too

 

 

As for night missions, especially in Farming/Woods:

 

It's worth to light up the area by firing full-auto with an Autocannon armed with Inc-amm (and a far away target, so that a field of fire can light up the area around you.

 

Alien nades are indeed nasty. Best is always to deploy every out, splitting into two small grps, and one minitank.

 

I dont know if it's a bug ( and I've already said it a few times ^^), but strangly... Ethereals are very allergic to laser (laser rifles afaik) so always keep a few laserrifles in you backpack. =)

 

Groove

[The Demi-Godly One]

Incindiary weapons do a good job of lighting up a night mission... But if you just want to light up an area I suggest the electro flares. (Although the incindiary is good for hurting enimies in the area)

[Fox]

Fox:

 

Your base's lighting isn't affected by the time of day. It'll have the same light level in the middle of the night as it would in the middle of the day. This doesn't apply to X-Com base maps selected with X-Comutil's map selector.

 

- NKF

It's funny, after I posted that and logged off the computer, I was thinking about that and remembered that the lighting stayed the same. I just didn't think it was worth the trouble to go back and edit it.

 

Incindiary fire is very useful for lighting up dark missions. Sometimes I just go to missions in the dark for the heck of it, so I can start some fires. Plus it adds to the coolness factor. Coolness factor is always good.

[jwh]

If you use incendiary ammos to light up night missions, won't they go out after a time and leave you in darkness?

[Stewart]

Make the effort to shoot down a terrorship, two interceptors armed with dual avalanche will do it easily and go home afterwards. If the terror mission goes through and it's not a daylight floater terror mission then consider this:

 

Don't bother with it. Let the aliens have their fun and get on with things. If you're shooting down enough UFO's and generating enough score anyway you can probably eat it.

[Fox]

Stewart's right. I usually do this with my first Ethereal terror mission, if I'm not ready with Small Launchers and Lasers. But generall I like terror missions. They are relatively rare, and a nice change from crash sites.

 

The tactic with ignoring sites when your crashed UFO score is keeping you high is more useful in TFTD, in my opinion. Two-parter ship missions are usually a slaughter without MC. Yeah, I know, some of you may think they are easy missions. Well, good for you guys then.

[TabulaRasa]

Im doing a lot better in my game now, my funding is low, but i can just sell excess plasma weapons for money. I destroyed one base and found tow others. I attempted to destroy another base, but failed because of mind control. Luckily, I always save before doing a big mission like that. But i dont know what to reaserch for power suits! Ive reaserched elerium and alien alloys but i still dont know what to do. I have two bases now, both fully operational with a skyranger and at least one interceptor with two plasma guns.

 

But i found a cool bug in the game! To describe it, one of my soldiers had a... split personality. He was near an explosion from a small launcher (he had no armour) and nearly unconcious. It was a terror mission with snake men and crissalids. A crissalid came up and attacked him, as it did, he went uncoincious. I saw the corpse representing him there, AND a zombie! Has this happened to anyone before?

[TabulaRasa]

I just played some more of the bugged mission. I killed the zombie/cryssalid on top of the corpse of the split guy, and then i killed the original cryssalid. I examined the guys corpse, but then it wasnt the guy anymore, he had turned into another cryssalid corpse! Very strange.

[NKF]

I've had soldiers getting cloned in the middle of the battlefield. The soldier was injured and on his last turn, but he was also standing in smoke. So when the game stunned and then killed him, it got the events in the wrong order. It first killed and then stunned the soldier. On the ground was a corpse and an unconcious body, which can still be saved. The mysterious dead soldier on the ground is counted in the debriefing, even if you did not lose anyone.

 

 

As for power suits:

 

Alien alloys -> Personal armour -> Power unit -> Power suit

 

You dont' even need to research elerium for the suits. You need to use elerium in the production of the suits, but its research is not a prerequisite for the armour.

 

edit: Also, get the UFO navigation done to upgrade to the flying suits.

 

--

 

Tip:

 

If you've already researched blaster launchers, but you're still having a lot of trouble with destroying alien bases that have powerful psionic aliens, do a surgical strike. Go in, locate the command centre, and fire a few blaster bombs and destroy the four tables in the upper level, then get back to the entry room and dust off. If you're lucky, you can do this in the space of a few turns if your starting positions are right near the command centre, or you get a visual of the centre. If the base isn't wiped off the map, well, you can always repeat the mission.

 

- NKF

[TabulaRasa]

Thanks for the tip, i do have blaster launchers. They are fun to use! and i will reaserch the power suits when i finish my current reaserch. When i go to the next alien base, i will try a surgical strike if they are etherials or sectoids. I might actually win, i got an increase in funding finally.

[TabulaRasa]

Okay, ive got a progress updade on my game. Ive got a third base dedicated to training a force to wiping out alien bases with sectoids or etherials aliens. Ive got hyperwave decoders and powersuits. Destroyed two more alien bases, in one of them, i finally found a leader and got the martian solution. Funding is about the same. I use plasma cannons only. I now need an alien commander... which i had before!!! I guess another wont be hard to find with my psi troops because i know where they hide. If anyone has any more hints, ill be glad to take them!

[Rosstoid]

Here is a hint. Do not mind control the alien you want to capture! I've been using squads of PSI warriors and snipers to deal with the aliens. I found an alien medic, so took over his brain and got him to shoot himself with a small launcher. I did not get him because he was counted as "friendly" and not hostile. I read that a guy once used mind control to keep a base commander in smoke, captured him and went home. The commander was not captured either. You can, however, control the desired alien, get him to ditch his weapons and leave him pretty harmless for easy takeover.

 

I'm not sure whether this was a bug or anything, but later on Ethereal battleships have commanders. I'm not sure this applies to all ethereal battleships or anything, but I once found two commanders on one! Just use a blaster bomb to make a hole in the top floor (try not to kill anything), send some flying troops in and take the target out.

[BreakMage]

Interestingly enough, Rosstoid, I did the same thing.

 

EDIT: Ok, so not the EXACT same thing, but a similar situation.

 

I was on a Snakeman base, so I was really on the lookout for Chrysallids instead of snakemen, and since I had just gotten Psi and some ability to use it, I was having fun trying to MC every snakeman I could ever see. My first one was a Medic, and my second one was a Commander. What I did was that I would take a few turns and got them next to each other, then used the Small Launcher to stun anything that CAME CLOSE to the commander (All of my soldiers had Power Armor, I wasn't worried). But eventually, I got both the Medic and the Commander up into the Retreat Zone, and while they were under MY control, I dusted off. I got a free Medic and Commander for nothing

 

Later, I went back and nuked the base with Psi and Blaster Launchers.

:devil:

[The Demi-Godly One]

Actually commanders are not only on etherial battleships and bases. They can appear on: bases (duh), ALL battleships. some terror ships and large and small scouts (very rare, and I think it is a bug).

[TabulaRasa]

I will try to get the commander out of a base. I defeated two more, one had mutons, the other had etherials (i used my psi troops) So capturing a commander will be no problem if i use mind probes to spot the commander and psi control him with my most powerfull psi guys. Then bring in a couple of guys with small launchers to stun and gaurd him. I also have reaserched the avenger so i can build one and go to cydonia after with a large group of psi troops. Thanks for all the help, if i hadn't had it, i would have lost the game by now. I have lost a lot of countries funding including the US :crazy: . So i hope i can survive. I got about 2000 points from the bases i destroyed so that will help. I hope i can win, and thanks again for all the help!

[TabulaRasa]

Thanks for all your help guys, i finally won the game! Getting into the base on cydonia was very hard because my guys were mind controlled a bit. I lost six guys on top, and one or two below. But i still won! The brain thing was punny looking and green inside . But now im going to play TFTD and try to beat it. So thanks so much for all the help!

[Groovechamp]

Gratz =)))

 

Now it's time to free the oceans from alien scum ^^

 

Groove