Damn Mind Control!

[concept]

Sorry if this has been asked before, I did a search but couldn't find anything about it. I recently rekindled my love with this game thanks to steam and the Xcomutls stuff.

 

Now I keep finding that after about 3-4 missions the little greys get my soldiers under mind control and make the entire mission unplayable and it's really annoying. How do I stop this?

[NKF]

Mind control - one of the most unbalancing aspects of the game. Quite a challenging thing to combat in the beginning.

 

A few things that you can do:

 

- Escape the mission. If it's an ordinay recovery/assault mission or terror site and you're being bombarded with psionic attacks - consider just leaving the mission. It's better than losing the whole squad. Also if you do know sectoids are at a terror sites, just visit it, try and shoot what you can out of the back of the Skyranger on turn 1 or 2 and dust off.

 

- Play aggressively. Charge ahead and wipe out every sectoid you see until they start panicking or you manage to wipe out their Leader - who is performing the mind control. The leader is usually in the bridge of the UFO, so head there as quickly as you can. If the UFO has a hole in the roof, toss some high explosives or grenades through. On larger UFOs and alien bases, beware that there will be several leaders and possibly a commander that will be able to use psionics as well.

 

- Capture a sectoid leader or commander as soon as possible. They'll will give you access to the psi lab, where you can start screening your troops of their psi abilities.

 

- Arm weaker weapons like pistols and rifles while wearing personal armour or better. This way you can still harm sectoids easily, but not get hurt too badly if the weapons are used against you.

 

- As an alternate to the last point: drop your weapon every turn. Make sure you aren't carrying any grenades. Stun rods don't need to be dropped - the aliens don't know how to use it. It does mean you'll be lower on TUs every turn, but at least it'll make any mind controlled soldier harmless.

 

- Identify who is weak to psi and who is not - either through the lab or actual combat. Disarm them and have them roam about as spotters and let them soak up enemy psi attacks while you try to try to locate and remove the leader.

 

- After the battle, if any of the soldiers that succumbed to psi survived, remove their armour and have them sacked. Of course, you may want to hang on to them for a bit and use them against non sectoid/ethereal encounters, or continue to use them as psi sponges. In this case be sure to mark their names so that you can identify them as psi risks.

 

- NKF

[Bomb Bloke]

The aliens tend to take your soldiers in the same order each time. If you know which soldiers are gonna be targeted, blockade them in the back of your Skyranger behind a tank or a few other soldiers. If unarmed they can't do any harm, and if trapped they can't wander out and get killed.

 

By keeping the same "decoys" handy for your missions, the other team members are otherwise free to kick butt as per usual. If you let the decoys get killed, then the aliens will move on and start targeting the rest of the squad.

 

If the worst comes to worst though, remember that when a unit is under alien control it counts as THEIR unit. You kill it, they lose morale, you gain morale.

 

Speaking of tanks, they're completely immune to psi. Granted they're expensive, and granted they will sometimes get destroyed as soon as they start to roll down the ramp, but I consider them completely worth it. They don't run out of stamina, and can carry a heck of a lot of explosive power. If you want to make the aliens panic, they're the way to go.

 

Remember, a rocket aimed at a large wall near an alien is a lot more likely to hit, and so long as the thing detonates something's gonna die... Yeah, I'm a big fan of the "bloody rampage" tactic. Beat 'em into submission, lower their morale, and the psi attacks WILL die off.

 

If it's an ordinay recovery/assault mission or terror site and you're being bombarded with psionic attacks - consider just leaving the mission.

Note that in regard to terror missions, this is as opposed to "not turning up". You'll lose a lot more points for failing to attend at all then you will for appearing then running away.

[Zombie]

You could play on an easier difficulty level (if you aren't on beginner already that is). At the easier levels, aliens tend to shy away from psi a little bit more than on Superhuman.

 

Like NKF said, Sectoid leaders are most likely going to be on the bridge of the medium/large/very large UFO's (Harvester, Abductor, Terror ship, Supply Ship and Battleship) or in the command center of an alien base. For UFO's, explosions from the power source from a crash will always be confined to the lowest level of the ship, so there will never be a hole in the roof which is a floor or two above. So you'll need to huff it into the ship as fast as you can and try to kill the leader on the bridge. Or if you don't want a direct confrontation with the higher ranking aliens, shove a High Explosive pack through the ceiling in a couple places from below. That's usually enough to solve any psi issues. If you have the Small Launcher, shoot a couple stun bombs at the ceiling instead of using explosives. That way you can nab a leader with little risk.

 

If your men aren't screened for psi yet, there is nothing which says you have to visit a crashed/landed UFO or alien base. Just leave them alone until you are better prepared. The only time where you should visit a site with psi-aliens is obviously a Terror Site. Ignoring it is about the worst thing you could do as it is an automatic 1000 point deduction from your score. Visiting the Terror Site and dusting off immediately will drain only a maximum of -480 points. (-30 points/civilian * 16 max civilians). That's the worst case scenario. In most cases the number of civilians will be far less than this and there is a chance no civilians will show up either (rare, but it happens).

 

To offset the possible -480 points, try killing some aliens before you dust off. If the alien corpses and weapons are close enough, get a few of your men to haul them back to the ship. Every little bit helps. The problem with terror sites is that the alien leader could be anywhere on the map as there isn't a dedicated place where they can show up. It could be right next to your ship or even on the opposite side of the map; you just don't know. That's why it's important to at least try. Who knows, you may get lucky and kill the leader right off the bat in which case you wouldn't need to worry about psi attacks at all. The point in all of this is to regain some points. In most cases, you should have enough points squirreled away during the month to absorb the civilians killed penalty without breaking a sweat.

 

If psi-aliens attack your base, you're going to have to muddle through the defense mission the best you can with what you have. A proper base design can help in this respect. The first base you have is designed by an idiot, so reconstructing it with defense in mind is a priority. If you have enough money and bases, you could always shift everything out of the first base and let the aliens take it without a fight too.

 

- Zombie

[concept]

Thanks guys, I'm having a bit more luck now and keeping the poor psi troopers weapon less.

 

I like the idea of blocking them in with a tank but ...

• How do I configure where my troops stand on the Skyranger? Xcomutils says you can do it but how?
  

[Bomb Bloke]

It's not a "custom" thing. You either let the game arrange them as usual (in which case all your units will stand facing north), or you let XComUtil arrange them (in which case they'll stand looking out the craft windows, so you can actually SEE the area around your craft). You don't get to say "I want this soldier here".

 

Granted it might take you a few turns to get your psi-sponges locked in the back of your craft, but you've typically GOT a few turns before the psi attacks start coming in.

[NKF]

XComutil does have a rank sorter function, which simply pushes rookies up to the top and the highest ranks towards the bottom of the soldier list. This does make it so that the rookies get to jump off the Skyranger and Avenger first, while the higher ranked officers get pushed towards the back (or somewhere in the back in the case of the Avenger). The Lightning's a whole other kettle of fish though.

 

Just looking at the playlists on some of the music programs that I use has given me a bit of an idea. I just wish that I knew how to program win32 interfaces by hand though. My aged copy of Visual Studio (student ed) has never worked for some peculiar reason, so that's out of the question. The picture I have in my mind is of a simple list with a bunch of buttons down the side where you can push a selected unit up or down the list, and a few other buttons including a sort by (attribute), random shuffle and a save button.

 

- NKF